The race for the successor of Pascal Lamy as director-general of the WTO has narrowed down to two after General Council chair and Pakistan`s ambassador Shahid Bashir said on Monday that three candidates least likely to attract consensus were Mari Pangetsu of Indonesia, Tim Groser of New Zealand and Taeho Bark of the Republic of Korea. The three have withdrawn their candidatures, leaving the battle between two Latin American candidates, Roberto Carvalho de Azevedo of Brazil and Herminio Blanco of Mexico.

Now it will be up to both of them to garner support from Africa and Asia, where Brazil might have an edge. The US and EU are said to be supporting the neo-liberal Mexican candidate.

The next round of consultations based on this slate of two candidates, where each member would be asked about its preference, would begin on May 1 and will continue through May 7.

The EU has been accused of subverting the process by having given five preferences instead of four ( accepted by the selection Troika in the first round), effectively eliminating African candidates in the first round and Kenya has questioned the neutrality of the selection process. It gave its preference as a bloc and not 27 individual states.

According to Bashir, in the second round each member was asked to provide not more than two preferences. Out of 159 members, 158 gave their preferences thus one member did not express his preferences. Could it be Kenya, which did not participate in the informal HOD meeting on the selection thereafter?

After both the African (Ghana and Kenya) candidates were eliminated in the first round of consultations, Kenya refused to withdraw its candidate of Amina Mohammed, the current assistant general of UNEP and former ambassador to the WTO, who remains in the race. Kenya formally communicated to the General Council on April 17 that the first round of consultations in the selection process for the next DG was ?grossly flawed? and eroded the credibility of the entire process after Mohammed was eliminated in the first round.

Kenya has warned that it will refuse to retain is right not to join the consensus ?until, it is satisfied that the next stages of the selection process have adhered strictly to the rules?.