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TWN
Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jun20/09) Geneva, 9 Jun (D. Ravi Kanth) – The race for selecting the next Director-General to head the World Trade Organization (WTO) began on 8 June, with Mexico nominating its current Under-Secretary for North America, Mr Jesus Seade Kuri, as its candidate. In a communique sent on 8 June to the WTO’s General Council (GC) chair, Ambassador David Walker of New Zealand, Mexico informed members that Jesus Seade Kuri, currently Mexico’s Under-Secretary for North America, will be its candidate for the post of DG to replace the current incumbent Roberto Azevedo, who had announced on 14 May that he will step down from office at the end of August. [Meanwhile, on 9 June, a press release issued by Hamid Mamdouh, the former director of the WTO’s services division, said that the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt has formally submitted to the WTO his nomination for the post of Director-General of the World Trade Organization. At the moment of writing, there has been no official announcement from the Egyptian mission in Geneva itself. – SUNS] The Mexican candidate Jesus Seade Kuri claimed that he has “unique experience in global trade policy negotiations and policy” as well as “extensive interactions with senior authorities in all regions at the WTO, IMF (International Monetary Fund), and W. Bank (read as World Bank)” in his curriculum vitae (CV). Earlier, Seade Kuri was Mexico’s ambassador to the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and chief negotiator for Mexico during the creation of the WTO. He had also served as a deputy director-general of GATT, and founding deputy director-general of the WTO in 1995. Subsequently, he was the chief negotiator of the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement), according to his CV. During the 2012-13 selection process for choosing the DG to replace then DG Pascal Lamy, whose term ended on 31 August 2013, Mexico had put up Herminio Blanco as their candidate. Blanco, however, lost in the final round of the selection process against Roberto Azevedo, when members of the European Union remained divided between these two candidates. It remains to be seen how Seade Kuri will fare in the current race in which members are required to file their nominations by 8 July. FISSURES EMERGE OVER AU’S CANDIDATE Meanwhile, in a separate development, fissures have emerged in finalizing the African Union’s candidate, with Egypt objecting to replacing the Nigerian candidate Yonov Frederick Agah with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current chair of the board of GAVI (the global alliance for vaccines and immunization). In a letter to the African Union members on 5 June, Egypt said that “three candidates of Benin, Egypt and Nigeria obtained the endorsement of the Executive Council” for the post of the Director-General of the World Trade Organization. Egypt argued that Mr Eloi Laourou of Benin (the current trade envoy to the WTO), Mr Abdulhameed Mamdouh of Egypt (who had worked as the director of the WTO’s services division) and Ambassador Yonov Frederick Agah of Nigeria were the three candidates that were endorsed by the AU’s Executive Council in February 2020. Cairo asked the African Union’s Ministerial Committee on Candidatures to officially inform the African Group in Geneva “that candidature of Ambassador Yonov Frederick Agah of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been withdrawn and disqualified and that Mr Abdulhameed Mamdouh of the Arab Republic of Egypt and Mr Eloi Laourou of the Republic of Benin are currently the only two endorsed African candidates.” In this context, Egypt said that it is holding consultations with Benin “with the aim of reaching a consensus on one African candidate between the two only currently endorsed African candidates and will communicate the outcomes of these consultations to the esteemed Ministerial Committee at the soonest possible date.” According to Egypt, “during the Ambassadorial level Ministerial Committee on Candidatures meeting which was held on 4 June 2020, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) gave its legal opinion regarding Nigeria’s nomination of new candidate to the post of WTO-DG, in which the OLC clearly highlighted – from a legal point of view – such a nomination (of Dr Ngozi from Nigeria) is not in conformity with the Executive Council decision EX. CL/ Dec.1090 (XXXVI), since the Council’s decision had specifically endorsed the three names of candidates as submitted by the Ministerial Committee’s report after thoroughly examining the qualifications and professional experience of each of the three abovementioned candidates.” Egypt asked the African Union’s OLC (Office of the Legal Counsel) to circulate to Members of the Candidatures Committee, in writing, its abovementioned legal opinion regarding the conformity of Nigeria’s new nomination. Clearly, Egypt’s “immediate” communication to the African Union on 5 June could raise more divisions among African members in finalizing the African candidate to replace Azevedo, said a trade envoy, who asked not to be quoted. Further, it is not clear whether Kenya’s former foreign minister and the former GC chair Ambassador Amina Mohamed, who has also indicated that she wants to contest the WTO’s top job, will throw her hat into the race, the trade envoy said, suggesting that she is also exploring whether she could head the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. The European Union, which reckons that the next director-general of the WTO ought to be a European, is yet to finalize its candidate, according to media reports. The EU’s trade commissioner Phil Hogan, according to media reports, has expressed his desire to lead the global trade body, while the Spanish foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez (who was chef de cabinet to Pascal Lamy as WTO DG) is also likely to stake a claim as the EU’s candidate. She recently gave a talk to the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, saying that the WTO can be saved with “repairs” and not dismantlement, according to media reports.
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