Why the UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Polokashvili was never properly elected?

UNWTO is looking for a new Secretary General by November
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Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

After 4 years, it becomes suddenly clear that the 2017 election of the UNWTO Secretary-General was not proper. Zurab Pololikashvili should not be the current Secretary-General. There may be a chance that at the upcoming General Assembly in Morocco, this mistake can be corrected.

  1. There are two steps necessary to be followed in the election process for the UNWTO Secretary General, and both of them were not followed correctly in 2017.
  2. THE FIRST STEP is the election by the UNWTO Executive Council that took place in Madrid on May 10, 2017. Statutory regulations and established practices for the organizations were violated.
  3. THE SECOND STEP: Article 22 of the Statutes of the Organization states: “The Secretary-General shall be approved by a two-thirds majority of full members present and voting in the Assembly on the recommendation of the Council, for a term of four years…” (“full members” means sovereign states). Statutory regulations and established practices for the organization were clearly violated.

The recommendation by the 105th session of the UNWTO Executive Council to recommend Mr. Zurab Polokashvili from Georgia as its Secretary-General to succeed Dr. Taleb Rifai from Jordan should be invalid since proper procedures and statutes were maliciously violated. The UNWTO legal advisor and attorney Ms. Gomez maliciously ill-advised Dr. Taleb Rifai who was relying on her evaluation.

The confirmation for Mr. Pololikasvili at the XXII UNWTO General Assembly held in Chengdu, China on September 13-16, 2017 by acclamation was invalid and clearly violated established statutes relying on malicious statements by UNWTO attorney and legal advisor Mrs. Alicia Gómez

Mrs. Alicia Gómez still works for the World Tourism Organization as a legal counselor and was promoted to this better position shortly after Mr. Pololikasvili took office in January 2018.

A prominent and senior eTurboNews source very familiar with the issue analyzed the explanation by Professor Alain Pellet, a former legal advisor for UNWTO.

Pellet’s explanation of the validity of an argument concerning the proposal of a candidate by a UNWTO Member country explains the situation the competing candidate Alain St. Ange was in.

In the meantime, Alain St.Ange has been rewarded more than a million Seychelles Rupees for being wrongly removed from the UNWTO election. His removal clearly aided Mr. Pololikasvili to win.

As reported by eTurboNews over the last 4 years, there are many more irregular issues this publication had called fraud, manipulation, and more.

There is one last opportunity to correct some of the wrongs.

All eyes are looking at the upcoming General Assembly in Marrakesh, Morocco the end of November.

How mandated steps were not followed at the 2017 election?

As outlined earlier, there are two steps in the election process for UNWTO Secretary-General

Neither of these two steps of the election has been followed in accordance with the statutory regulations and the established practice of the organization.

Here is how.

Recommendation of the Executive Council

Rule 29 of the Rules of Procedure of the Executive Council says that the recommendation of a nominee for the post of Secretary-General is done by secret ballot and a simple majority vote during a private session of the Council.

The expression “simple majority,” which could be misleading, is defined as corresponding at fifty plus one of the ballots (in case of an odd number, the number immediately higher than half of the votes) cast by the members of the Council present and voting.

The rule says: “if no candidate receives the majority in the first ballot, a second, and if necessary other ballots shall be held to decide between the two candidates receiving the larger number of votes in the first ballot.”

In the event that two candidates share second place, one or several additional ballots may be necessary to determine who are the two candidates that will participate in the final vote.

In 2017, when 6 candidates were running (after the 7th one from Armenia had renounced), the election was concluded at the second ballot.

Mr. Pololikashvili won over Mr. Walter Mzembi of Zimbabwe.

In the first ballot, the results were: Mr. Jaime Alberto Cabal (Colombia) with 3 votes, Ms. Dho Young-shim (Republic of Korea) with 7 votes, Mr. Marcio Favilla (Brazil) with 4 votes, Mr. Walter Mzembi with 11 votes, and Mr. Zurab Pololikashvili with 8 votes.

In the second ballot, Mr. Pololikashvili received 18 votes, and Mr. Mzembi 15. Mr. Alain St.Ange from Seychelles had withdrawn his candidature immediately before the election.

Who can be a candidate for UNWTO Secretary-General?

To be a candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization, you must fulfill various conditions and follow a procedure, which has been defined over the years, from 1984 to 1997.

  • You have to be a citizen of a Member state, and this state should not have accumulated unjustified arears in its contributions.
  • The election of the Secretary-General is a competition among individuals, not among countries. However, not anyone can run on his or her own move.
  • Candidatures have to be presented by a competent authority of a Member state (head of state, head of government, minister of foreign affairs, qualified ambassadors…).
  • This role of “filter” should not be regarded as an endorsement, a support, or even a recommendation issued by a government, as it is sometimes wrongly mentioned in some UNWTO press releases or documents.
  • Words are important: it is simply a proposal. 
  • The decision CE/DEC/17 (XXIII) taken by the Executive Council at its 1984 23rd session, which put in place the procedure followed until today, states: “candidates shall be formally proposed to the Council through the Secretariat by the governments of the states of which they are nationals…”
  • There is no identity between the candidate and the country: no provision of the texts would impeach a government to submit two or more candidatures.
  • Once a candidature is received, it is communicated through a note verbale by the Secretariat to the organization members.
  • When the deadline for receiving candidatures is reached (usually two months before the session), a document is prepared by the Secretariat and sent to the Council members indicating the final list of candidates, and communicating the documents that each of them have to provide (letter of proposition from their governments, curriculum vitae, statement of policy and management intent, and, recently, good health certificate).
  • It is on the base of this document, which also recalls the procedure to be followed, that the decision of the Executive Council to recommend a nominee to the Assembly is taken.
  • It appears nowhere that the final official list of candidates which has been communicated could be modified at a later stage.

However, the document CE/112 /6 REV.1 issued in 2020 for guiding the ongoing election of the Secretary-General for the period 2022-2025 surprisingly indicates that “the endorsement of a candidature by the government of a Member state is an essential requirement and its withdrawal will result in the disqualification of the candidate or the nominee.”

This consideration is a pure invention from the current Secretariat of the institution.

The possibility of the withdrawal of a governmental proposal (not “endorsement,” as it has been pointed out before, does not result from any applicable statutory text or from a decision of any organization – Council and Assembly – involved in the process.

The extraordinary hypothesis that a nominee could be disqualified in the midst of the electoral process, a situation which logically would impose a new recommendation issued by the Council on the occasion of the following session, is not contemplated – and for good reason! –

  • not in the Statutes nor in the Rules of Procedure of the two organizations involved.

The said consideration about the possibility for a government to withdraw its proposal in the midst of the process had not appeared in the document CE/84/12 issued in 2008 to guide the election of the predecessor of the current Secretary-General for the period 2010-2013, nor in the document CE/94/6 issued in 2012 for the period 2014-2017.

More important, it was absent from the document CE/104/9 issued in 2016 to rule the election process for the period 2018-2021.

It is this text and the corresponding Council decision which governed the 2017 election. The fact that four years later a new consideration, opposed to the anterior understanding of the procedure, is introduced, appears as a clumsy tentative to justify retroactively the mistake made in 2017 on the occasion of the designation of the current Secretary-General.

Pellet | eTurboNews | eTN
Alain Pellet

The line of argument developed above, following which there is no room in the UNWTO texts and practice for the withdrawal of the government’s proposal of a candidate for Secretary-General, has been validated by the University professor, former president of the UN International Court of Justice, who has been the legal adviser of the organization for 30 years, and to whom the current legal adviser was an assistant.

According to eTurboNews research who explained the statue is Alain Pellet. He a French lawyer who teaches international law and international economic law at the Université de Paris Ouest – Nanterre La Défense. He was Director of the Centre de Droit International (CEDIN) of the University between 1991 and 2001.

Pellet is a French expert in international law, a member and former President of the United Nations International Law Commission, and is or has been counsel for many governments, including the French Government in the area of public international law. He has also been an expert to the Badinter Arbitration Committee, as well as rapporteur of the French Committee Jurists on the Creation of an International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.

He has been an agent or counsel and lawyer in more than 35 cases before the International Court of Justice and has participated in several international and transnational arbitrations (in particular in the area of investment).

Pellet was associated with the conversion of the World Tourism Organization (WTO) into a specialized agency of the UN, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

This interpretation is the only one in accordance with the basic principle enshrined in article 24 of the Statutes, that in the performance of his duties, the Secretary-General of the UN World Tourism Organization, as well as every member of the staff, is independent and receives no instruction from any government, including his or hers. What is applicable to the management of the institution is relevant, mutatis mutandis, for the spirit to guide the designation.

In 2017, this basic principle was ignored.

As mentioned before, two African candidates were competing for the post of Secretary-General: Mr. Walter Mzembi of Zimbabwe and Mr. Alain St.Ange of Seychelles.

In an action never seen in the history of UNWTO, in July 2016, the issue was put on a political basis, with the decision of the African Union and accepted by Seychelles, to support the candidate from Zimbabwe.

Never in the past had another international organization interfered in such an improper manner in the internal affairs of the World Tourism Organization.

On May 8, 2017, a few days before the meeting in Madrid of the Executive Council, the Government of Seychelles received a note verbale from the African Union asking the country to withdraw the candidature of Mr. St.Ange, subject to severe sanctions from the organization and its members.

As a small country, Seychelles had no other choice than to give in to the threat, and its new President informed the Secretariat of the organization a few hours before the opening of the Council session, of the withdrawal of the proposal of its candidate.

Many members saw that twist as a result of an intervention of Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, who had left recently the post of Chairman of the African Union and as the “father” of the independence of his country, as exerting a strong influence on African leaders. Dr. Walter Mzembi was a minister in the cabinet of Robert Mugabe.

When informed of the move of his country, Dr. Taleb Rifai, the UNWTO Secretary-General at the time, was urged to seek the advice of Ms. Alicia Gomez, the legal adviser of UNWTO.

He was informed by her that Alain St.Ange was not legally entitled to maintain his bid. Secretary-General Taleb Rifai still gave St.Ange the floor in the Council meeting before the point of the agenda concerning the election. St.Ange delivered an emotional speech arguing why he should be allowed to run.

For the reasons developed before, it has to be considered that the answer of the legal adviser, not rectified by the Secretary-General, was incorrect.

It is difficult to understand how the then outgoing Secretary-General could have considered, as he declared afterward, that the election for the smooth running of which he was responsible, had been regular.

At the minimum, there was a strong doubt on the conformity of the process, and on the fact that this was the first time an incident on this precise theme was taking place.

The issue should have been put to the members of the Council in order for them to decide on the procedure to be followed.

This is what the Chairman of the 55th session of the Executive Council did in 1997 in Manila when a problem of interpretation of the rules governing the election arose.

With the disappearance of the Seychelles candidate, the deal of the cards suddenly changed.

Dr. Mzembi remained the only candidate representing Africa, the region with the highest number of votes in the Council.

He led the vote in the first ballot.

However, it was clearly difficult for a representative of Zimbabwe to be elected as the head of a UN institution when the country and its President were under sanctions from many countries, including the United States and the members of both the Commonwealth and the European Union, and under criticisms from the Security Council of the United Nations.

Mr. Pololikashvili was at the end of the day elected as the consequence of the rejection attached to the candidate of Zimbabwe.

Had Mr. Alain St.Ange, as we pretend here it was his right to do so, maintained his candidature, the story would have obviously been different. 

In November 2019, the Supreme Court of the Republic of the Seychelles recognized the legitimacy of the claim made by Mr. Alain St.Ange in relation with the late withdrawal of his proposal by the government.

In accordance with this judgement, the Court of Appeal decided in August 2021 that St.Ange would be compensated for the costs he had incurred and for the moral damage he had suffered.

Election at the UNWTO General Assembly in Chengdu, China 2017 – the Second Violation:

The requirement by article 22 of the Statutes of a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly to appoint the Secretary-General has been mentioned above.

According to rule 43 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly: “All elections, as well as the appointment of the Secretary-General, shall be made by secret ballot.”

An annex to the Rules of Procedure establishes the Guiding Principles to conduct the elections by secret ballot, which is done through the use of ballot papers, each member entitled to vote, being called by turn.

If the principle is clear, its application raises a practical problem since the individual vote under the mechanism of a secret ballot takes a lot of time: at least two hours may be lost in the tight agenda of the Assembly.

Therefore, when in practice it appears that a consensus has emerged among the members to ratify the choice of the candidate submitted by the Executive Council, the Assembly may decide to set aside the statutory provision of voting by secret ballot and proceed with an election by public acclamation.

This way of acting, copied on the procedure followed by various other international organizations, requires as an absolute pre-requisite that there is unanimity among the members for accepting the substitution.

If not, the Rules of Procedure would of course be violated.

Therefore, on every session of the Assembly, when starting with the discussion of the item of the agenda on the appointment of the Secretary-General, the President of the Assembly, reading a paper prepared by the Secretariat, informs the members about the procedure to be followed, recording that on various occasions the designation has been made by acclamation, but insisting that if one single member requests to stick with the statutory provision of the secret ballot, this one would apply as of right.

This is how the discussion on the election of the Secretary-General started in September 2017 in the General Assembly held in Chengdu.

It started with the Chairperson reading the document explaining the procedure to be observed. Following her question of whether any member was opposed to the vote by acclamation and was requesting the strict observance of the Statutes, the Head of the delegation of Gambia asked for the floor and called for a secret ballot.

The game should have been over, the debate should have stopped there, and the secret voting should have started.

This is not what happened!

Many delegations made passionate interventions, either supporting the vote by acclamation or calling for the respect of the Statutes. Clarifications were asked from the legal advisor and from the Secretary-General.

Instead of just saying the law, their long, loose, and, in the end, useless comments embroiled furthermore the debate.

The endless discussion became tense and more and more confused.

Obviously, the delegations supporting Mr. Mzembi, especially the African ones, were trying to get one-third of negative votes, to make an obstacle to the election of the nominee, and impose a new designation by the Executive Council, and those in favor of Mr. Pololikashvili’s election or fearing a possible come-back of the Zimbabwean candidate were insisting on the necessity of a vote by acclamation, to “demonstrate the unity of the organization.”

As a matter of fact, because of the lack of knowledge of the rules by the Chairperson, the uncertain leadership from the Secretary-General, and the weak performance of the UNWTO legal advisor MS Gomez the unity of the organization was really at risk at that time.

The Secretary-General and the legal adviser could have recalled that the same discussion on the procedure had happened during the 16th session of the General Assembly held in 2005 in Dakar.

Just as in Chengdu, a confusing debate on possible voting by acclamation started.

As in Chengdu, one delegation – Spain – objected, but more delegations asked for the floor.

The then Secretary-General, who was running for re-election, intervened, even if it was not in his personal interest, since a vote by acclamation is the easiest way to have no opposition. He recalled the text of article 43 of the Rules of Procedure and made clear that since one single country, namely Spain, has requested a secret vote, the discussion was over.

The secret ballot voting took place, and, incidentally, the incumbent was reelected with 80 percent of the votes.

Regarding the election of the Secretary-General by the General Assembly, the UNWTO texts leave no room for doubt, and until 2017, the practice of the Institution was in total accordance with these texts.

The Chengdu election was a sad moment in the history of the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

During a break in the debate, a deal was concluded: in exchange for his acceptance of the vote by acclamation, a mission was assigned to Mr. Walter Mzembi to make proposals for a reform of the appointment procedure of the Secretary-General – a mission which, of course, had no follow-up.

Mr. Pololikashvili and Mr. Mzembi went on stage for a hug under the applause and cheers of most of the members, who, a few seconds earlier, had, consciously or not, violated the Statutes of their Institution.

As for the selection of the nominee in Madrid, had the rules been respected for the election in Chengdu, the story and the person in charge of UNWTO may have been different.

The world of Tourism is now looking at the upcoming UNWTO General Assembly to correct the situation, and for tourism to become a strong global player again.

This is specifically necessary to guide this fragile industry to a post-COVID-19 time. It needs strong leadership and a lot of money.

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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