UN Security Council Holds Sixth Straw Poll in Secretary-General Selection

The shift to colored ballots turns a procedural straw poll into a transparency test, exposing whether the P5's veto power is being used to protect or eliminate candidates. That distinction matters because the council's recommendation effectively decides the next secretary-general, and the formal threshold of nine encourage votes with no P5 opposition is what any viable candidacy must clear. Whether the colored-ballot format is repeated in subsequent rounds is the open question, since it changes how much the wider UN membership can infer about great-power preferences.