Portugal MP wins IPU presidency; beats Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Canada

Raman Pandit

Duarte Pacheco of Portugal has been elected the new President of Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) for the period of three years. The election was held during an extraordinary online session of the IPU’s Governing Council, its main decision-making body made up of parliamentarians from around the world.

Duarte Pacheco takes over from Gabriela Cuevas Barron, a Maxican parliamentarian, who has just concluded her three-year term.

           
There were four candidates include Duarte Pacheco from Portugal, Muhammad Sanjrani from Pakistan, Akmal Saidov from Uzbekistan and Salma Ataullahjan from Canada, in the fray for the election of IPU president.

New IPU president Pacheco, in a statement, said: “I believe that the IPU is the ideal forum to reach the goals of success we want for humanity: a world with more equality, social cohesion, peace, better environmental quality, and which can address, in unity, the global challenges we are now facing.”    

Prior to the election, a hearing with all four candidates took place on 21 October. The candidates had the opportunity to set forth their vision for the organization and to answer questions from the wider IPU membership. In order to encourage gender equality, each member parliament had three votes on condition that they had gender-balanced delegations. Single sex delegations were penalized by only having one vote. Over 40 per cent of voting members were women MPs and 27 per cent were under 45.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla congratulated Pacheco for his election as President of IPU. Birla said: “Your success in the election is a success of your vision of strengthening parliamentary diplomacy.” Birla hoped that Mr. Pacheco’s belief in ideals of democracy, rule of law, consensus building and multilateralism would help in building a stronger and more focused Inter Parliamentary Union in sync with the changing times.

Earlier, the governing council of IPU, Geneva resumed its business during the 206th Session in virtual format. The election process to elect the new IPU President through remote electronic secret ballot, with a 24 hour window for casting votes came to a close at 1930 hrs.

The Indian Parliamentary Delegation led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and consisting of Poonamben Hematbhai Maadam, MP and Shri Swapan Dasgupta, MP attended the meeting of the IPU Governing Council. The Secretary General Lok Sabha, Snehlata Srivastava also attended the virtual meeting.    

  The IPU is a global organization of national parliaments dedicated to promoting peace through parliamentary diplomacy and dialogue. IPU has 179 Member Parliaments and 13 associate members.