United Nations: Trump wants his Buddy Orbán as UN Secretary General

Why not? Incumbent António Guterres was head of government in Portugal for six and a half years before becoming United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and then UN Secretary General in 2017. Viktor Orbán, however, was the longest-serving prime minister in Europe with 20 years in power in Hungary. From a purely formal perspective, the 63-year-old meets the requirements for the high office better than all of the other applications mentioned so far.

According to the schedule, it would actually be Latin America's turn to nominate a Secretary General to succeed Guterres' term of office, which expires at the end of December. But Orbán also has an advantage here: According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), he is said to have been proposed by US President Donald Trump and, after talks with the leaders of China and Russia, is also supported by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

When Trump was re-elected in 2024, Orbán said that the US president's second term would mark the dawn of a new era for the West and that the White House would finally be occupied by a friend. One who would support him in the fight against the so-called liberals in Hungary and the EU. Orbán saw himself as a mediator, someone with connections to both Trump and Putin who could help shape world politics alongside the US president.

When Orbán was voted out in April, celebrations took place in the streets at night in Budapest and other Hungarian cities, like on Sunday evening in Belgrade after Aleksandar Vučić was sent into the desert.

But in Trump, the founder of Orbánism, who aligned Hungary's entire power system and economic cycle to himself and his closest friends, has a friend. Someone who does the same thing and thus finds favor with like-minded people like Xi and Putin.

A candidacy for election to the UN Security Council can only be successful if none of the five permanent members China, France, Russia, the USA and the UK exercise a veto. An agreement between these so-called P5 is therefore crucial. In total, a successful application would need 9 votes from the 15 permanent and non-permanent UN Security Council members.

According to the WSJ, 8 votes for Orbán are “certain”, 2 more are within reach. And France and Great Britain would hardly use their right of veto, according to the assessment.

So far, the only applicants available for selection are those who were unable to prevail in test votes: Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), supported by Italy and Paraguay and nominated by Argentina. The Costa Rican Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis, who until April was the first woman to head the UN trade and development conference Unctad.

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés is the former president of the 73rd UN General Assembly, who, as a former foreign and defense minister, was not even nominated by her own home country of Ecuador. Former minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is supported by her home state of Guyana. The former Ecuadorian ambassador to the USA, Ivonne A-Baki, nominated by Tonga, has so far only found support from Trump.

Uganda's ex-Foreign Minister and former UN Under-Secretary-General Olara Otunnu was nominated by Uganda. And most recently, the United Arab Emirates sent their former UN representative Lana Zaki Nusseibeh into the race on October 21st.

The seventh test vote in the UN Security Council is scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Orbán has not yet confirmed his candidacy.