We’re going to close out our live coverage of the evening with a quick summary of the candidates arguments – check back through the blog below to read about the Syrian refugee crisis, reforming the UN, the arguments for intervention, how the candidates think about human rights, and where they think the Panama Papers and dirty money should be dealt with in the international order.
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Natalia Gherman, 47, Moldova’s former acting prime minister herself as a “principled” candidate who would unite the 193 members around the idea of “solidarity” – including a “culture shift” down to the local level.
- Danilo Türk, 64, Slovenia’s third president, made the case for realpolitik diplomacy, dealing with such issues as intervention (and nonintervention) and whistleblowing on a case-by-case basis.
- Igor Lukšić, 39, Montenegro’s former prime minister, argued that the UN needs a fresh face and fresh ideas to confront the rapid changes of the 21st century. He called for a hands-on role for the secretary general in working groups.
- And Vesna Pusić, 63, Croatia’s former foreign minister and deputy prime minister, argued that the UN needs to vastly reform how it works, and by making it understandable not just to the general public but to the many mid-size states who neither contribute or receive much from the organization.
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Closing remarks from a professor who helped organize the event. He praises the openness of new election process, and the unscripted quality of tonight’s talk – and the humor – that it’s brought to the UN process.
“This has made a difference,” he says, noting that another candidate is releasing an 80-page platform to the public. More openness might come at some cost to the old ways of doing things, he says, but “the glass is, for me, two-thirds full.”
He hopes that the UN can decide a successor to Ban Ki-moon this fall, and that he hopes the candidates will pledge not to seek a separate position with the UN through the course of their campaign. He thanks all the parties involved with the debate, and the room applauds.
Would you call yourself a feminist?
Pusic: “I started the first feminist group” in the former Yugoslavia, she says, adding that she believes “it’s a matter of respect today”.
Lukšić takes another question that was asked, saying that he thinks the secretary general needs to be more hands-on in various working groups.
Türk goes back to gender equality, noting that he’s worked on various teams that have dealt with the issue. “Teams are necessary to work effectively and teams work best when you have basic gender parity. The closer you come to 50/50 the better.”
“In the leadership of the secretariat we really have to establish parity at the senior level.”
A question about Macedonia’s recognition, and whether the UN should bring it to a vote.
Gherman says it’s up to member states to recognize other bodies – she’s evading it slightly – “the secretary general should be very attentive and should try to facilitate”.
How do you feel about a five-year term?
“It is basically a decision to be taken by the member states,” Lukšić says. He says it makes the system more accountable – if after five years a secretary general has not achieved a goal, it’s a mark on their record.
Türk cracks: “Well, every election is for one term.”
“The decision belongs to everybody else,” Gherman fudges.
Pusic goes along with it: “all of the above”.
“It would make the secretary general’s life much easier if it was one unrenewable term, but no one’s asking this.”
A question about achieving the global sustainable development goals. Gherman says that it really requires a “change in the mindset” of people around the world, including “at the level of communities”.
“It will go like this only if we are serious about creating new partnerships and consolidating the existing ones. And without the private sector, without the civil society, and without the communities and individual citizens, it will be very difficult to implement.”
She says “we need to apply the world solidarity”. Nations need to share the experience, “not cherry-picking” from their goals, she concludes.
Panama papers: does the UN have a role in monitoring and stopping “dirty money sloshing around the world” (Borger’s words).
Lukšić says the issue has been raised “by prime ministers and heads of state” and that it could certainly fall within the UN’s jurisdiction.
Turk says: “I would say this is certainly important task for the future, right now the UN does not have a particularly strong role in this.” The UN should consult with OECD.
Pusic doesn’t disagree but adds: “One simple rule of thumb is to keep a clean record of all the money that’s coming in and all the money that’s coming out.”
It’s not clear whether she means that nations need to individually regulate firms such as Mossack Fonseca better or that the UN should do better overseeing finance writ large.
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Who will be the next #UNSecGen? We need to hear the candidates' approaches the the world's problems @FutureUN @UNAUK pic.twitter.com/EE4O4Q7t4c
— Nick Micinski (@nickmicinski) April 14, 2016
A reporter: “how are you guys paying for your campaigns?”
Lukšić: The government of Montenegro is covering the costs, 35,000 Euros, up till now. He wants to keep it as low as possible.
Türk: Slovenia treats this campaign as “part of the regular diplomatic” budget. So it’s his normal resources – 40,000 Euros for the entire process. That’s all he’s got.
Gherman: The Moldovan government’s covering it too. “Just a couple of air tickets,” for her personally, other than that it’s on the diplomatic missions.
Pusic: “When my government nominated me for the secretary general, they lost elections. [Laughter.] So so far I’m paying for my ticket and the hotel.”
Last question of this round: the balance of power. Lukšić takes this too.
“The only way to measure the mettle of a secretary general is by looking at his or her results eventually. If easily you fall under the pressure you lose respect. So there has to be constant consultations, constant dialogue. The secretary general should really exercise the role of chief diplomat, honest broker.”
Lukšić’s pitch: The secretary general should be more involved.
Pusic agrees. “You need a certain level of personal authority,” she says, “you have to perform in that job to earn certain respect, and being principled certainly helps” – an diplomatic rebuke of Gherman’s praise of principle. “But being principled also in a way that you can also produce results.”
You can’t hide from pressure, Pusic says, but you have to be constantly receptive to the demands of not only the security council nations, but also the nations “who would like to be on the security council”. She’s arguing for dealing with pressure by diffusing it.
Next question: the arts’ role in human rights.
Türk says that member states should contribute money to a fund “to tell stories”, because “there are many stories” that need to be told to the UN but are not being heard. Sometimes the stories come out during crises, when people’s voices reach the UN through the din of war, but too often, he says, people are ignored.
Lukšić: “there’s no sustainable development without art, without culture.” He says the arts and culture should become part of the goals.
“One of the issues we have is this detachment,” he says, and the need to bring the UN “closer to the people”. People from “literature, sport, science” need to get more involved, he adds, and “join this big movement and make sure this process is inclusive”.
Bolger tosses the question to Gherman, who says “there is such a role for the secretary general,” and that if member states request aid then the secretary general should accede to taking up their cause before the council and assembly.
“The most controversial cases were of course Libya [and] South Ossetia,” the breakaway region of Georgia, she says. But it’s still “the responsibility” of the UN to forge consensus.
The UN needs to figure out how to agree, in other words, not least because of the dangers of independent action, she argues.
“If there is no common policy of implementation,” she says, “then there will be all this opportunity of certain member states to use [action] unilaterally, and this situation unfortunately erodes international law.”
Bolger asks Pusic whether anything more could’ve been done by the secretary general about the Syrian civil war.
She doesn’t know. Maybe a few matters of intervening more directly diplomatically – speaking to the Syrian government, as many factions as possible, etc – but she knows that secretary general Ban Ki-moon was doing just that.
“You’re not going to resolve anything without being ready to talk to everybody that wants to talk to you.”
“This issue of interference or noninterference,” she says, “the United Nations cannot force a country to accept a type of interference it’s going to get.”
She finds an example: “I’m against capital punishment. That doesn’t mean I’m going to walk out and make a scene … and there’s going to be some repercussions for countries that have capital punishment.”
“But you can put these topics on the agenda,” she argues, ie the secretary general can push countries to confront issues even if she can’t singlehandedly resolve them.
Next round of questions. What’s your position on China’s general stance of neutrality – or at least “noninterference” – in most global affairs?
Danilo Türk fields it first. He says that the UN has a charter declaring that the body cannot interfere in matters that are within domestic circumstances – “but we have seen what is in domestic [circumstances] change over time”.
He again pitches himself as a realist – it’s always a case by case situation to Türk.
“There is no substitute for sound judgment for specific features of every specific situations,” he says. “Interventions can go badly wrong, and noninterventions can go badly wrong.”
Igor Lukšić goes next, taking a question about intervention and human rights. He tries to navigate a middle ground, praising the work of the UN human rights council, while conceding that it struggles with money and logistics. Incremental progress is still progress.
Vesna Pusić, former deputy prime minister of Croatia:
Pusic argues that there really is need for a strong leader, at the very least to make the UN more alive to the billions of people it represents.
“I was surprised to see how many people that have nothing to do with the United Nations got interested in following the procedure, listening to the candidates … just excited that this process now has some faces.”
That should tell us to what extent “there is a need for some personality,” she says.
At the same time, she says, the security council cannot be ignored for their powers and influence.
“You have 193 nations that expect” attention, voice, context, etc, she says. “You have to have understanding of a little bit of all of them.”
.@Igor_Luksic in #UNSecGen debate: the @UN needs to take precedence over the #EU in dealing with #RefugeeCrisis. pic.twitter.com/M3H4nj89ty
— Sally Sharif (@Sally_Sharif) April 13, 2016
Lukšić is next. He says that the “quickly changing world” – globalization, population booms, cultural shifts – is why the secretary general has to change.
“It’s a different world,” he says, suggesting that terrorism is one of the products of these rapid changes. Then he tells a story about being in high school hearing about a UN resolution – and then decades later we’re hundreds of resolutions later.
“The legacy of the current secretary general, because last year was enormously important, it was a tremendous year,” he says, noting agreements like disaster agreements, the climate accords, etc. “We need to organize to implement all of that.”
It’s “inevitable” he says that the next administration seeks new answers.
Borger cuts to the point of the question: should the secretary general use the bully pulpit?
Gherman says: “the principles and the values that are enshrined in the charter of the United Nations have never failed us, it is us who’ve failed those principles.”
She says it’s the secretary general’s role to see dangers on the horizon and to take them to the security council and general assembly long ahead of the danger itself. “Because of the lack of unity in defining what is a threat,” she says, “situations such as Rwanda occurred.”
“The next secretary general actually has to deploy absolutely all tools that are available in the toolbox … in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”
She notes the dual role: general of the body and secretary to the member states.
Danilo Türk, former president of Slovenia:
My colleague Julian Borger, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, is the next moderator. He’ll be fielding questions from the audience here in New York.
He suggests to the candidates that they pretend it’s their first press conference as secretary general.
A reporter asks how the candidates would expand the role/power/influence of the secretary general. A second member of the crowd asks about their experience in South America, Asia and Africa. A third questioner, a grad student, asks about strengths and weaknesses – the classic job interview question.
Danilo Türk is first up. He’s going to do all three.
“In the past the secretary general could have utilized the office’s role more frequently,” he says. Then he notes that although he lives in New York, last week he was in Senegal studying river management between four countries – he travels for work a lot, he’s saying.
Finally he asks “how does one create space for a proper 21st century time”.
“We have old models, the old NGO system, but that’s not sufficient.”
Finally he admits “of course there will be some weaknesses,” and he says he doesn’t know enough about some parts of the world. “Everybody has strengths and weaknesses, and I could go through a list, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for a candidate.” He gets laughs for the dodge.
There has to be better cooperation between the #UN & regional orgs. -Igor Lukšić #refugees #UNSecGen #GuardianLive pic.twitter.com/NJJrSG2S2w
— WFUNA Youth Network (@WFUNAYouthNet) April 13, 2016
The next question is about refugees, and the UN’s criticism of Turkey’s refugee deal with the EU.
Lukšić says Turkey is a case study in the problems of handling refugees. “This concrete example shows that there needs to be more cooperation between the UN and other organizations … UN cannot do everything on its own.”
“It cannot happen that the regional arrangements are more proactive and happening than the UN,” he argues. The UN should be leading, he argues.
And this is just one problem of the exodus from Syria, Libya and the broader Middle East and North Africa. Sustainability, GDP – all kinds of issues are related to migration, he says, arguing that migration can actually boost at least those two examples.
Pusic fields the same question. “Allow me to differ a little,” she says. She agrees about regional-UN cooperation, but, “I think we have to be very clear,” she adds, “it’s a refugee issue not a migration issue.”
“It is true that it is very difficult for Europe to deal with it, everybody fought with everybody else,” she says, because “there were that many refugees in such a short period of time”.
“They all came from Turkey,” she observes, after being directed there from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. Turkey asked for help while it held those refugees in refugee purgatory, she says, until “at one point they opened the gates and they started coming across” the Mediterranean.
“These people are refugees but they are not coming from the countries where their lives were in danger. They’re coming from a country where they were not provided help in time.”
She sees the point of the EU-Turkey deal, in other words, but it speaks to a larger, earlier problem of how the UN operates.
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Natalia Gherman, Moldovan minister of foreign affairs:
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Again back to accountability. Gherman says the secretary general “should first and foremost lead by example”.
Only by displaying integrity does a person “have the right to demand the same from your staff”.
Getting down to nuts and bolts she notes the actual ethics and legal offices in the UN. “There is no place for corruption, no place for fraud, mismanagement or waste.” But she says it starts at the top.
A question about the peacekeeping revelations: what would you do to protect whistleblowers and prosecute peacekeepers who commit crimes or malfeasances.
Türk says he knows the specific whistleblower, Anders Kompass, who exposed sexual abuses by peacekeepers, and that he’ll protect him.
Rice-Oxley presses the case: the UN is terrible about protecting people…
Türk insists it’s about specific cases. Kompass is “an exemplary case”, with “the kind of credibility” that clearly merits protection. “We’ll build our new approach” around the Kompass case, he suggests.
We’ve got more than 20,000 questions, Rice-Oxley notes. Time to go through them one by one. Beat. Laughter.
The real question is about sustainable development. How will you realize some of these very broad goals?
Pusic says “one thing that might help is to broaden the base of countries that might get involved”, rather than relying on one big donor who gives all the money and sets up various shops in poorer countries.
“Most of the countries are in between,” she says, meaning they neither give or receive much, and “have absolutely no tradition of development cooperation”.
Those nations should get involved, she argues, using the example of a small maternity hospital in Afghanistan set up by Croatia.
One such hospital won’t make a huge difference, and “we didn’t have more money” for more than that. “But bringing 10 countries,” or 20, “will actually make a big difference.”
She concedes that these big goals are about money, “but also about transferring experience and knowledge”, and “all kinds of things that influence the economy but are not only the economy.”
Changing the culture in these mid-size nations, she argues, will make a real difference.
Candidates for UN secretary general Igor Luksic, Danilo Turk, Natalia Gherman and Vesna Pusic, with Mark Rice-Oxley pic.twitter.com/At8pj1Er9c
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) April 13, 2016
Rice-Oxley asks about the makeup of a hypothetical cabinet.
Lukšić suggests that his deputy secretary would come from the southern hemisphere, since he hails from the northern, and that he would aim to create a UN where everyone feels “ownership”.
He broaches the argument of 17 countries providing 82% of funding for UN operations: “it’s a pretty fair argument” and the secretary general has to work on “balancing it out”.
“Let’s try to make it a more interactive, more transparent procedure.”
Pusic gets a little serious – “if you want outsiders, in that sense, you’ve got them,” she argues, since the eastern European nations represented onstage are smaller countries, and comparatively marginalized in the context of the broader UN.
She agrees that it’s important to shake up the system, but not by “denying the importance of any inside political experience, political understanding”.
“But yes, some kind of iconoclastic attitude toward set rules” and approaches, she says. Then she scolds the UN for “UN-speak”: the mishmash of letters and NGO lingo that are more or less impenetrable to your average, non-UN citizen. The number of abbreviations the UN uses are “ridiculous”, she says, and don’t serve the people.
“Nobody can understand what people are saying!”
Rice-Oxley notes that all four of the candidates on stage are from eastern Europe.
Gherman says that more than whose “turn” it is – the position generally rotates between world regions – what’s important is who’s qualified. Past that, she says that the “equitable geographic representation” is baked into the UN’s founding principles.
Mark: what’s more important, an eastern European or a woman?
Pusic gestures between her and Gherman: “are you asking us?”
Türk jokes too: “we haven’t had an eastern European…”
“How do you achieve fairness,” he asks, “in an organization that represents all parts of the world without regional representation?”
Rice-Oxley suggests that Africa and Asia are
You should be careful with these characterizations,” Türk jokes. “Be glad it’s not a more informal setting,” Lukšić jumps in.
Is it time for a “Trump candidate”, Rice-Oxley.
Lukšić: “Do we need to make UN great again?”
Everybody laughs at that.
Igor Lukšić is asked about his long odds to become secretary general – 10 to one, Mark says. Lukšić is 39, the youngest declared.
Lukšić jokes: “Yesterday I was 20 to one!”
“I’m sure that the genie cannot be brought back into the bottle,” he says, praising the reform measures that the UN has already begun with the open hustings. He says he wants people to hear and see hearings and ask: “Have you delivered? Why not? What was your problem?”
“I really believe the UN needs something new, not only faces, new approaches.”
“What does the world’s youth think of today’s world? Because many research believes that this is the best period on earth a person could be born,” he says, noting medical and technological and wealth advance. “But are we really sure the youth” believe this, he asks.
“There’s been some detachment between the UN and the people,” he says. “We need to fight to make the UN relevant.”
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Danilo Türk is next asked about his first 100 days.
“I believe the objective of the secretary general would be to achieve a global security understanding” – he promises explanation of that later.
He too wants reform within the UN, especially in the area of sustainable development. “We cannot manage things we can’t measure,” he says. “On a short term basis I think we can do something in the secretariat as well.”
He suggests a small group of key officials and a shortened period of recruitment for UN projects and teams. It takes 100 days to recruit and vet a person for a job in the UN, he says. “We have to change the process, and we can do it.”
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Natalia Gherman receives the next question: what would be your greatest challenge in charge?
Gherman: “I think that the most challenging task would be to reform the United Nations in the sense of bringing fresh ideas, fresh solutions. In some words to de-conserve the system.”
She wants the UN to be “better purposed and results oriented”, “stronger, more adaptable and deliver faster and more efficient[ly] on the common agenda”.
“We know that bureaucracies never reform too willingly, or too fast,” she observes. Terrorism and climate change require action. “We don’t have this time. We have to do this fast and very well to make sure we are fit for the job, because our citizens are expecting nothing less.
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Rice-Oxley introduces the candidates: Igor Lukšić of Montenegro, Danilo Türk of Slovenia, Vesna Pusić of Croatia and Natalia Gherman of Moldova.
He asks Pusic what makes her the best candidate. She cites her experience seeing war between Serbia and Croatia, her diplomatic work which “curbs arrogance, to some extent”, “in facing and dealing with countries and people who are dealing with high [stakes] conflict of this kind, like wars”, which she says are not only deadly but can be “extremely embarrassing”.
She adds some of her non-UN experience: teaching at university, founding a human rights and reconciliation NGO during the Serb-Croat war, and “finally in 2000 I became an elected politician and spent considerably more time in opposition than in government”.
“So I’ve seen many different aspects of being active and trying to move things forward.”
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Citizens of more than 160 countries have submitted questions she says, outlining the format of the debate. Akin to the US primaries, but “No one will be asking you to comment on the size of your hands,” she jokes.
Nonetheless she hopes the debate will be spirited this evening. “Think of this as being your living room, and think of us as being your very nosy new neighbors.”
And with that she welcomes the moderator, my colleague Mark Rice-Oxley, and the candidates.
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Natalie Samarasinghe, executive director of the United Nations Association-UK (UNA-UK) and co-founder of the 1 for 7 Billion – the campaign that helped push the UN to greater transparency – is next up at the podium.
“You have here of course your own election drama that is unfolding,” she says, adding that from overseas people are watching “with a little bit of bemusement”.
Then she turns serious, noting that many governments have “turned inward” rather than concentrating on root causes of extremism or addressing problems that cross borders, such as refugee and health crises.
She says that she doesn’t think “the international system we’ve built over the last 70 years will survive” unless it’s led by men and women who are capable of finding compromises. “For many people I think the UN seems to be a very distant organization, one that is opaque … and paralyzed by power politics,” she says, adding that the times call for greater change within the UN itself.
“We felt it was simply unacceptable for the secretary general to be chosen in secret, subject to all kinds of backroom deals by the five permanent members of the UN security council,” she continues. Thus the call for transparency – and the first time in history that the UN has released the names of candidates.
Finally she adds a call for the secretary general to serve longer terms (each term is currently five years). “What is the point of selecting a great person to do a job and then stifling them at every turn by the politics of seeking the appointment?”
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Suzanne DiMaggio, director and senior fellow of New America, a co-host of the debate, is welcoming the crowd at the thinktank’s New York event space.
“Tonight’s event represents the first ever public discussion” for the secretary general position, she notes, praising “the more transparent nomination process” and the more informal hearings at the UN. “Who says change never comes to the United Nations?”
She says folks can contribute to the discussion via #UNSecGen.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the first ever public debate in the election for the next head of the United Nations – the “most impossible job on this earth”, in the words of one secretary general to his successor.
We’re in Civic Hall, in New York City, where four men and women who would succeed Ban Ki-moon will face questions about war, pandemics, refugees, climate change and forging agreements between 193 nations that disagree on all those problems and more.
This year’s open hustings is the first of its kind: for the past 70 years the secretary general was chosen by the 15 members of the UN security council and their pick was sent to the general assembly for approval. Campaigns were held behind closed doors, with diplomats meeting in the chambers and hallways of the UN’s offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi. Both the security council and general assembly approved an open election after a campaign by hundreds of NGOs and rights groups.
There will be two debates: one tonight in New York, co-hosted by the Guardian and the New America thinktank, and one in London on 3 June, co-hosted by the Guardian, United Nations Association – UK (UNA-UK) and the Future of the UN Development System (Funds).
These are Guardian Members events. For more information click here.
Before tonight’s debate, which is slated for 7pm, a quick look at the candidates.
Vesna Pusić, 63, deputy speaker of the Croatian parliament and formerly foreign minister and deputy prime minister: A longtime liberal minister in Croatia’s parliament, Pusić set up the first feminist organisation in what was Yugoslavia at the time, helped coordinate talks between Croatians and Serbians when the countries were at war, and advocated for LGBT rights, European integration and democracy in post-communist eastern Europe.
Danilo Türk, 64, Slovenia’s third president: While a law professor in the 1980s, Türk began work with Amnesty International to document human rights violations in Yugoslavia, and quickly found his way to the UN. At 33 he drafted the text of the UN’s Declaration on the Right to Development. At 40 he was Slovenia’s ambassador to the body for nearly a decade, and former secretary general Kofi Annan appointed him as assistant secretary-general for political affairs. In 2005 he returned to lectures and then served as Slovenia’s president.
Igor Lukšić, 39, Montenegro’s former prime minister: Another representative of the former Yugoslavia, Lukšić has been a minister in Montenegro’s parliament since 2001 and in 2010 became prime minister, following stints overseeing finance and press relations. He is a strong advocate for the EU (and Montenegro’s entry into it), and supported privatisation of banks and anti-corruption measures as finance minister. He has also authored three volumes of poetry and prose.
Natalia Gherman, 47, Moldova’s former acting prime minister: Gherman has served as foreign minister and an ambassador to a number of European nations and spent most of her life in diplomatic service. She also spent several years as one of Moldova’s representatives to the UN, advocating for human rights and gender equality. Like her fellow candidates, her pro-western bona fides might mean opposition from Russia, which, along with the four other permanent members of the security council, has veto power over the candidates.
There are four other declared candidates, though they will not be at the New York debate. They are Irina Bokova, the director general of Unesco, from Bulgaria; Srgjan Kerim, the former foreign minister of Macedonia; Antonio Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal and former UN refugee chief; and Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand and head of the UN Development Program.
There is no deadline to declare a candidacy, and some have speculated that German Chancellor Angela Merkel could join the contest. The position of secretary general has traditionally rotated around world regions, and neither a woman nor any eastern European have ever held the position.
When the security council does vote to “encourage” or “discourage” each of the candidates later this year, their votes will for the first time be public.
- This post was amended on 14 April 2016 to correct the titles of two of the candidates for security general, Vesna Pusić and Natalia Gherman.
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