Portugal was re-elected for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Council during the elections held yesterday in the Plenipotentiary Conference (PP02) that is meeting in Marrakech. This will be the third consecutive mandate of Portugal in the ITU governing body, to which Portugal was elected in PP94 , in Kyoto, being re-elected in PP98, in Minneapolis.
ITU Council is composed of 46 countries, which corresponds to approximately 1/4 of the members of this organization, distributed into the 5 regions: A - Americas (8 seats); B - Western Europe (8 seats); C - Eastern Europe (5 seats); D - Africa (13 seats); E - Asia and Australasia (12 seats).
With 124 votes, Portugal was the second most voted country from Region B, after Germany. According to the results of yesterday elections and by order of scrutiny, the following countries from Western Europe will seat in the ITU Council: Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain, France, Norway, Turkey and Italy. Two other candidates were left out of it: United Kingdom and Slovenia.
In the remaining regions the following countries were elected : Canada, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela and Suriname, by Region A (Americas); Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Czech Republic, by Region C (Eastern Europe); Morocco, Cameroon, South Africa, Algeria, Kenya, Egypt, Senegal, Tunisia, Mali, Nigeria, Burkina-Faso, Uganda and Ghana, by Region D (Africa); India, China, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Iran, by Region E (Asia and Australasia).
Yesterday, the whole PP02 electoral procedure was completed with the election of the members of the Radio Regulations Board (RRB). RRB is a body that operates on a part-time basis, composed of 12 members, also distributed proportionally by the ITU regions.
On the previous days, elections for other ITU posts had taken place, which led to the re-election of the Secretary General (Yoshio Utsumi, Japan), the Deputy-Secretary General (Roberto Blois, Brasil), the Director of the TSB - Telecommunication Standardization Board (Houlin Zhao, Republic of China) and the Director of the TDB - Telecommunication Development Board (Hamadoun Touré, Mali).
The election for the post of Director of the Radiocommunication Board (RB) was the most disputed one since the former Director could not be re-elected. Out of the four candidates to the post - K. Arasteh (Islamic Republic of Iran), F. Bigi (Italy), V. Timofeev (Russian Federation) and M. Johnson (United Kingdom) - the winner was the Russian candidate, on the second round.
Get additional information in PP02 Newsroomhttp://www.itu.int/newsroom/pp02/index.html.
