Alberto Rubio (Samarkand)
By a difference of four votes, the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization yesterday rejected Uzbekistan’s proposal for the current secretary general, Zurab Pololikashvili, to renew for a third term, until 2029, at the head of the United Nations-dependent organization.
The decision was taken after an intense debate at the previous meeting of the 119th UNWTO Executive Council, which approved, with 19 votes in favor, 12 against and one abstention, to recommend the proposal to the General Assembly, where two-thirds of the votes present were needed to give the green light to Pololikashvili’s re-election.
In the end, the vote in the Assembly left the current secretary general at the gates of his re-election: 65 countries voted in favor and 38 against. There was one abstention.
The proposal presented by Uzbekistan was based on the unanimous recognition of Pololikashvili’s work at the head of the Organization. As The Diplomat reported, this work had already been endorsed by a dozen countries as soon as the proposal was made public last August.
That recognition was again evident yesterday at the General Assembly, where all member countries praised the change experienced by UNWTO during Zurab Pololikashvili’s tenure since he took over the Secretariat General in January 2018. They all agreed to highlight the modernization and rejuvenation of the organization, the establishment of regional offices such as the one in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) or the upcoming ones in Brazil and Africa.
They also highlighted the reforms undertaken during the difficult times of the pandemic or the war against Ukraine and the unblocking of the work to provide the UNWTO with a new, more representative headquarters in Madrid. For all these reasons, these countries considered it necessary to keep the secretary general at the head of the organization in order to complete the projects initiated in recent years.
However, the countries opposed to Pololikashvili’s renewal argued that in 2005 the General Assembly held in Dakar (Senegal) approved the addition to the UNWTO Statutes of a rule limiting to two four-year terms the maximum stay of a secretary general at the head of the organization.
Spain, which has hosted the UNWTO headquarters since its foundation in 1975, was among the members that opposed Uzbekistan’s proposal, as it understands that the organization’s current statutes prevent the secretary general from renewing a third term.
Spain’s Secretary of State for Tourism, Rosana Morillo, acknowledged to The Diplomat that the modification approved in Dakar, precisely proposed by Spain, would still have to be ratified by two-thirds of the Member States, according to Article 33 of the Statutes, before coming into force.
However, she pointed out that the 2005 General Assembly also approved the inclusion of a paragraph stating that “pending the entry into force of the modification, the term of office of the Secretary General may be renewed only once.
Morillo admitted that “these are different points of view” regarding an issue on which he considers that “Spain has to be consistent with its own proposals.” “We are not negatively judging the performance of the current secretary general,” she explained, “because we are not talking about the person, about Zurab Pololikashvili, whom we have the greatest respect for and value his exceptional work, but about the position of secretary general of the UNWTO.”
