Make or break for CS Amina as AU meets to vote in new chiefs

Monday afternoon, all the lobbying that has gone into the campaign for Foreign Secretary Ambassador Amina Mohamed’s chairmanship of the African Union Commission will be put to the test.

She will face off with increasingly growing competition from her counterpart in Chad, Moussa Faki Mahamat, who is touted to be her strongest competition yet.

Senegal’s Dr Abdoulauye Bathily has also been enjoying growing support as countries like Gambia and Djibouti side with him.

Equatorial Guinea’s Mba Mokuy and Botswana’s Pelonomi Venson Moitoi are equally strong candidates but Kenya’s candidate appears to be jittered by the Westerners more.

This is how the voting will work. There are 54 countries participating. Each gets one vote. Each round has three votes. Heads of State and Government who will vote will be locked up in the Nelson Mandela Plenary Hall at the African Union Headquarters from 3.30 pm, with only four other delegates per country. The purpose of this is to allow quick lobbying in the event each round doesn’t produce a clear winner.

Back to the voting process, in each round, the Head of State will press a button thrice to vote for a candidate, and then a tally will be done. In the event none of the five candidates garners a two-thirds majority, they move on to the second round. But three candidates will be dropped and the best two move to round two.

In this round, there will be a few split minutes to allow reorganisation from states. Then the process will be repeated, a round of three and a tally. If none of these two candidates produces a two-thirds majority, the best one moves on to the third round. The process is repeated again, a round of three.

It is here that two options will remain – either the candidate garners a two-thirds majority, or the election is declared inconclusive and another election set, as it was the Rwanda case in July 2016.

Kenya remains optimistic that Amb Amina Mohammed will clinch the seat.