President Luis Abinader spoke up for a renewed model of multilateralism and called for the voting of a woman to the position of Secretary General of the United Nations.
Current secretary general Antonio Guterres of Portugal was first appointed in 2017 for a first term and re-appointed in 2022 for his second term that expires on 31 December 2026.
Analysts and government officials are calling for a reformatting of the current model of multilateralism. This context makes the election of the UN’s 10th secretary-general, in 2026, for the 2027-2031 term, one of the most consequential in its history.
By unwritten convention, the secretary-general post rotates by region. After Guterres’s two terms from the Western Europe bloc, it is now the turn of Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, even that informal agreement could be contested, as Africa could submit a candidate and Eastern Europe emphasizes that it has never held the UN leader post.
The leading woman candidate to succeed Guterres appears to be Michelle Bachelet. Chilean President Gabriel Boric said during the UN General Assembly in New York that he would nominate the country’s former President, Michelle Bachelet, as a candidate for UN Secretary General. “She’s a woman whose own trajectory is fully in line with the values that inspired this organization,” Boric said during his speech at the 2025 UN General Assembly.
Other potential contenders often mentioned include Mia Mottley (Prime Minister of Barbados), Alicia Bárcena (Mexico), Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica) and María Fernanda Espinosa (Ecuador).
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Reuters
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25 September 2025