The intensifying struggle for the soul of UNWTO

LAST week the city of Madrid, Spain, was a hive of intrigue and obfuscation — both conscious and accidental — into which cocktail has been stirred (but not quite shaken), a dash of possibly “innocent” deceit and some outright sleight-of-hand.

It saw the “off” in the increasingly no-holds-barred race for the secretary-generalship of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation ( UNWTO), with aspiring candidates — now eight in number — either making formal launches within UNWTO’s heartland (the Organisation is headquartered in Madrid) or using the backdrop of FITUR, Spain’s annual international tourism fair — the global industry’s second most important gathering — to lodge their candidature papers with the UNWTO secretariat.

Elections for the new secretary-general will take place in Madrid in May this year. The new secretary-general will take up his or her post in January 2018, replacing the widely respected and much revered Dr Taleb Rifai of Jordan, who, at the end of 2017, will stand down after his two-term leadership of the organisation.

What started some months ago as a relatively pedestrian exercise, with no more than two or possibly three serious candidates, has now developed into an eight-way tug-of-war, at the core of which is an all-out battle for the very soul of the organisation.

Three months ago, the only “declared” candidates were the endlessly energetic, engaging and articulate Tourism Minister of Zimbabwe, Walter Mzembi, and his almost direct opposite (personality-wise), Marcio Favilla — a Brazilian national holding a key executive director position within the organisation and is seen as an archetypal international bureaucrat. One year ago, for personal reasons and with the full endorsement of the Executive Council, Dr Rifai elevated Mr Favilla to become, effectively, his deputy and began to delegate to him more and more of his (Rifai´s) representational and managerial responsibilities.

In presenting his proposal to the Executive Council, Dr Rifai stated that Mr Favilla’s elevation would have no impact or implication whatsoever for the-then still forthcoming elective process.

If Mr Favilla had electoral aspirations and was in fact eyeing Dr Rifai’s seat at the head of UNWTO, he must have kept those thoughts very much to himself. But what an advantage to have been handed — travelling the world, representing the secretary-general, engaging directly with global tourism leaders at both political and industry level whilst all the time preparing the ground to enter the race as some form of anointed “internal” candidate.

Signs of Mr Favilla’s quiet campaigning began to surface as early as September, 2016, as he engaged numerous delegations at successive global tourism gatherings, sounding out the possibility of support, should he in fact decide to enter the race. But it seemed from early o’clock, that he would be a candidate. The question therefore is, to what extent has Dr Rifai been aware of those aspirations and when? And when they became clear, why was no action taken to persuade Mr Favilla to step back from his position as deputy secretary-general so as to avoid any possible conflict of interest or any suggestion that the playing field was such as to favour the “internal” candidate?

Then, let us look at Walter Mzembi. An outspoken critic of the prevailing system of internal, bureaucratic succession which has characterised the emergence of past secretaries-general, Mzembi has presented himself as the anti-establishment candidate — the new broom, the breath of fresh air which he and many others from the developing and emerging worlds, believe is needed to reform and reinvigorate the organisation.

In a sense, therefore, these early candidates represented a fairly clearcut contest between maintaining the status-quo by way of yet another bureaucratic succession (Favilla) or opening-up the door to significant change (Mzembi).

Given Mzembi’s resounding endorsement by the 54-member states of the African Union and his evident appeal to developing and emerging tourism-economies in other geographical regions, it was only a matter of time, perhaps, before the “status-quoists” would begin to show their hand and attempt to derail his leadership aspirations.

The first manifestation of their quest to undermine Mzembi came, somewhat surprisingly, in the form of another African candidate — or rather, a candidate from another African country.

Clearly pushed or motivated by European countries, who continue to have “issues” with Zimbabwe and cannot or will not separate Mzembi from his national pedigree, Alain St Ange, former Minister of Tourism of the Seychelles, quit his cabinet post and threw his hat into the UNWTO ring in the quiet period between Christmas and New Year last year.

Seychelles is a member state of both the Southern African Development Community ( SADC) and the African Union and was present during official meetings when both organisations unanimously endorsed Walter Mzembi as “Africa’s candidate”.

For this small island state to so brazenly break ranks with its sub-regional family and the continental mother body, speak volumes, perhaps, about what the Europeans might have offered by way of enticement.

Information reaching this correspondent seems to suggest that Mr St Ange — who has made no secret of his intention to run for the presidency of his country in two years time — may have responded to this encouragement to run in return for “support” for his presidential bid. At the time of writing, it is not clear whether Mr St Ange actually has the formal, written endorsement of his government — a key criterion for acceptance by the UNWTO Secretariat — of his nomination papers.

The objective of those encouraging him to run, of course, is to split the African vote and undermine Mzembi’s elective prospects come May.