Serbia's Jeremic is "best choice for UN reform" - WSJ

Serbia's Jeremic is "best choice for UN reform" - WSJ

The list of candidates running for the world organization's top job includes "a Vladimir Putin favorite and a lifelong socialist who mismanaged a global humanitarian organization," the article said, referring to Bulgaria's Irina Bokova and Portugal's Antonio Guterres.

Guterres, who in the past served as his country's prime minister and as UN Commissioner for Refugees leads in a series of informal straw polls currently held at the UN Security Council, and is also "the favorite of Western Europeans" - but "UN tradition dictates that the position rotate among regional blocs" and since it is now "Eastern Europe’s turn" the current favorite in that group is Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak.

He is described as having been "a Czechoslovak diplomat under the former Communist dictatorship and holding a doctorate from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations."

The article went on say Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova is Russia’s preferred candidate, while Argentine Foreign Minister Susanna Malcorra is a favorite of the Obama Administration.

"That leaves former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who polled third and is the only commendable candidate in the mix. At 41, the Harvard-educated Mr. Jeremic is young, but he was a leader of the social movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic’s dictatorship in Belgrade in 2000. He later served in the pro-Western government of Boris Tadic, who in 2010 issued a historic Serbian apology for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica," the WSJ said on its website, adding:

"Mr. Jeremic also seems to understand that his first job as secretary-general is to bring proper managerial controls to the UN’s sprawling bureaucracy and require UN officials to file annual public financial disclosures to avoid the corruption that became endemic in the days of Kofi Annan. That alone would restore some public trust in the broken UN system."

Reuters reported recently that to be successful, "any candidate must be endorsed by all five veto-wielding, permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, Britain and the United States."

The Council should recommend such a candidate to the UN General Assembly by October.