Kenya and Uruguay to vie for UPU leadership
The Universal Postal Union has confirmed that its next director general will be either Serrana Bassini Casco of Uruguay or Ambassador Bishar A Hussein of Kenya. The election of the successor to current UPU director general Edouard Dayan will be made on 10 October, as the UN-affiliated umbrella group for the world’s postal systems has its Congress in Doha, Qatar.
Dayan is stepping down after completing his maximum two four-year terms heading up the Berne-based organisation, with his successor taking charge for four years beginning in January 2013.
Monday (23 July) saw the deadline passing for the 192 member countries of the UPU to put forward candidates for director general and deputy director general.
In the election for the deputy position, succeeding from current deputy director general Guozhong Huang of China, Switzerland has put forward Pascal Thierry Clivaz, who will run against Dennis Delehanty of the United States.
The 25th UPU Congress takes place from 24 September to 15 October, with more than 1,500 representatives from UPU’s 192 member countries expected to participate in Doha to discuss the current state and future of the global postal sector.
Candidates
After eight years with a French director general, the next head of the UPU will come from an emerging economy.
The candidate from Uruguay, Dr Bassini, is currently the secretary general of the Postal Union of the Americas, Spain and Portugal (PUASP), the regional affiliate union of UPU based in Montevideo. A lawyer by training, her career has included 15 years at Uruguayan Post in various roles and a similar length of time at PUASP, initially as deputy director general before being appointed secretary general in 2006.
Ambassador Hussein is currently chairman of the UPU’s Council of Administration, the group of 41 member countries that oversees the UPU Congress, and also oversees technical and regulatory issues in the postal world. He is a past UPU Postal Operations Council vice chairman, and a former chief executive of Kenyan Post as well as the former Kenyan ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
The next UPU deputy director will come from a developed world country.
Clivaz has been director of finance and strategic planning at the UPU’s International Bureau since 2005, which has seen him lead development of the Nairobi Postal Strategy, the central work programme for the UPU over the past four years. Previously he spent five years as director of international affairs at Swiss Post, and is a former PostEurop board member.
Delehanty has represented the US at every UPU Congress since 1979 and currently serves as the director of postal affairs at the US State Department’s Bureau of International Organizational Affairs. His career has also included many years at the US Postal Service, including time in the early 1980s as international postal affairs specialist, and 11 years as international postal affairs program manager at USPS until 2004.
Councils
The UPU also noted this week that this October will also see 40 member countries elected to serve on the 2013-2016 Council of Administration, which is chaired by this year’s Congress host, Qatar.
A further 40 countries will be elected to serve on the Postal Operations Council, which works on modernisation programmes with postal operators around the world.
