GENEVA: Portugal Member of Parliament Duarte Pacheco has been elected as President of Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Duarte Pacheco was elected President for a three-year term defeating candidates from Pakistan, Uzbekistan (Akmal Saidov, First Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Chamber) and Canada (Salma Ataullahjan, Senator) during the ongoing virtual session of the Governing Council of IPU.

Portugal candidate Pacheco got 222 votes, much above the majority mark of 198 votes while Pakistani candidate received only 52 votes.
The elections were held securely through online medium.

Over the past twenty years, the presidency of the IPU has been held by MPs from Egypt (Arab Group. 1994-1997), Spain (Twelve Plus Group, 1997-1999), India (Asia -Pacific Group, 1999-2002), Chile (Group of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2002-2005), Morocco (Arab Group, 2011-2014), Bangladesh (Asia-Pacific Group, 2014-17) and Mexico (2017-2020).

The outgoing president is a Mexican MP Gabriela Cuevas Barron, who was elected in October 2017. By the principle of geographical rotation, the next president should be from the Twelve Plus Group, which comprises of 47 member countries. Twelve Plus group had endorsed the Portuguese candidate by an overwhelming majority of 60:10.