{"id":31159,"date":"2026-07-30T17:56:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T21:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/?p=31159"},"modified":"2026-07-30T19:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T23:00:21","slug":"ambassador-rodrigues-birkett-emerges-as-top-contender-in-first-un-chief-straw-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/ambassador-rodrigues-birkett-emerges-as-top-contender-in-first-un-chief-straw-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambassador Rodrigues-Birkett emerges among top contenders in first UN chief straw poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former Foreign Minister and current Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, emerged as one of the leading contenders to become the next U.N. secretary-general after placing second in the first informal U.N. Security Council straw poll on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan led the non-binding vote with 10 &#8220;encourage&#8221; votes, while Rodrigues-Birkett received nine, ahead of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi with seven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rodrigues-Birkett received two &#8220;discourage&#8221; votes and four &#8220;no opinion&#8221; votes, though the ballots do not reveal whether any negative votes came from one of the Security Council&#8217;s five veto-wielding permanent members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Diplomats said Rodrigues-Birkett was the surprise performer of the opening round, with one noting her chances could improve if her &#8220;discourage&#8221; votes did not come from permanent members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Multiple rounds of straw polling are expected before the Security Council recommends a successor to Antonio Guterres, whose second five-year term ends this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Foreign Minister and current Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, emerged as one of the leading contenders to become the next U.N. secretary-general after placing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[350],"tags":[488,370,412,405,1167],"class_list":["post-31159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-488","tag-guyana","tag-ncn-guyana","tag-ncn-news","tag-united-nations-secretary-general"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31165,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions\/31165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncnguyana.com\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}