A Latin American woman for U.N. secretary general?

(Photo: Natacha Pisarenko – AP)

When Argentine President Mauricio Macri recently blessed his foreign minister Susana Malcorra’s candidacy for secretary general of the United Nations, the joke in Argentina was that the country already has a Pope (Francis) and the world’s best soccer player (Lionel Messi) so it was only natural that it should seek the top U.N. job.

But judging from what Malcorra told me in an interview earlier this week, her candidacy for the top U.S. job is a serious matter.

It means that a highly qualified and well liked Latin American woman will join more than half a dozen other candidates for the U.N. job scheduled to be left vacant by Ban Ki-Moon at the end of the year. But it also raises possible conflict-of-interest questions regarding Malcorra’s stands on the Venezuelan crisis at a time when she needs Venezuela’s support to get the U.N. job.

Granted, right now Malcorra is not a front-runner for the job because, under the U.N. practice of granting the secretary general’s position to every region of the world on a rotating basis, it’s Eastern Europe’s turn to occupy the top U.N. position.

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