By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 18 -- Rwanda, Australia and Argentina won UN Security Council seats in the first round of voting on Thursday morning in the UN General Assembly. Australia's competitors Luxembourg and Finland face off in a second round, as do South Korea and Cambodia for a single Asian seat.
Despite a candidate-less campaign against Rwanda, complete with the leak of a UN Sanctions report two days before the vote accusing it of support of the M23 mutineers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda got 148 votes.
Tellingly, DRC got a vote -- its own? -- and Tanzania got three votes. The rest was abstentions, some from SADC as Inner City Press reported.
Exiting the first round vote count announcement, an Asian Group Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that the biggest surprise was "South Korea's low vote count, despite all that money." He indicated his country would switch to Cambodia in the second round. But would it be enough? Bhutan got 20 votes -- some dubbed it the Happiness vote.
Argentina won easily with 182 votes; Cuba and Barbados each drew a vote.
Election required 129 votes, which Australia surpassed with 140. Luxembourg just missed with 128; Finland came in with 108. The latter two face off in the second round. Earlier this week, Finland's Permanent Representative told Inner City Press his country had 165 "commitments." Oh the betrayal! So it goes at the UN. Watch this site.
