SUNS  4138  Tuesday  27  January  1998

Health: WHO board `interviewingo candidates



Geneva, 26 Jan (TWN) -- The 32-member Executive Board of the World Health Organization was meeting privately Monday with five candidates for the post of Director-General of the WHO.

The Board, is meeting individually with the five, who have been short-listed last week, and is due to vote on them Tuesday.

Two (Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and the current UNFPA head, Dr. Nafis Sadiq from Pakistan) are outside candidates, while three others are from within the WHO.

The candidacy of another "insider", Fernando Antezana of Bolivia (wrongly identified as from Brazil in SUNS #4135) was withdrawn by his country. It is not very clear whether it was due to the controversies that erupted about his academic qualifications and credentials at the time of his joining the WHO nearly two decades ago or due to the understanding within the region to support one candidate.

[On Friday, the WHO came out strongly rebutting the charges against Antezana, and pointing out that in some countries and regions, there was no doctorate degree as such but there were equivalencies and that Antezana's academic qualifications were the equivalent to a doctorate,
and that there had been no misrepresentation.]

The United States, which is not a member of the executive board, has however departed from the western hemispheric regional understanding and has backed Mrs. Brundtland, whose supporters claim she has the necessary votes even to win on the first ballot.

But this does not appear so certain.

And if it goes to a second ballot, depending on who gets eliminated in the first, it seems likely to give rise to some 'bargaining`.

Whatever the merits of the original architecture about the executive board of the WHO, it also would give rise to questions about its role in an election process.