António Guterres, the former Portuguese prime minister, will be the next UN secretary general, after the security council agreed he should replace Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of next year. The second-place candidate, the Slovak Miroslav Lajčák, had seven votes in support and six against him – two of them vetoes from permanent council members. “We had a straw poll where, for the first time, the permanent members were filling in ballots of different colour. The permanent members had red ballots and the non-permanent members had white ballots,” said the UK ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft. Her candidacy only lasted a few days and eight council members voted against her, including two permanent member vetoes.

Source: The Guardian October 05, 2016 16:09 UTC