Clark preferred choice of UN staff

Stuff reports:

A United Nations staff poll has named Helen Clark as the preferred person to take on the role of Secretary General.

Clark said on LinkedIn that she was pleased with this result but that there’s still a long way to go. 

“I said at the outset that this campaign would be a marathon, not a sprint, and so it has proved to be.”

It is interesting that UN staff see Clark as the best candidate. Many of them would be in a good position to have an informed judgement.

Sadly they don’t get a vote. The next straw poll is 9 September and then 19 September. After that starting 26 September the polls will include a different colour for P5 members so one can see if any candidate has the support of all of the P5.

The results from the UN staff poll were:

When asked to name their top 3 candidates, UN staff — identified by an email address belonging to a UN programme or organisation — were clear. Clark received 439 mentions, Guterres 381, and Figueres 340. Irina Bokova with 269 and Susanna Malcorra with 201 votes were far behind these top 3. Among the other candidates, only Danilo Turk, with 130 votes, reached triple digits.

However also reported:

Dozens of top experts consulted by the Avaaz team agreed with the strongest three candidates as selected by UN staff, though in general spoke most highly of Guterres, and saw Clark’s candidacy as the weakest of the three.