How to Hold Elections Without Really Voting

To prevent controversial issues from coming to a vote, parliamentarians of the past have invented such devices as the filibuster, the return to committee, the pigeonhole and the quorum call. Last week the U.N. General Assembly achieved an ingenious new direction in creative parliamentarianism: the elective nonvote.

It came about because of the Assembly's current quandary over Russia's nonpayment of dues for U.N. peacekeeping operations in the Congo and the Gaza Strip. To avoid a disastrous showdown over the U.S.'s demand that Russia pay up or be banned from further voting, the General Assembly had decided (TIME, Dec. 11) not to vote on anything until a compromise could be reached. But General Assembly President Alex Quaison-Sackley was faced with the need to get Assembly approval of four new nonpermanent Security Council members to replace those whose terms were expiring. Though Indonesia's President Sukarno was loudly threatening to withdraw his country from the U.N. if his arch-enemy Malaysia got one of the seats, it was clear that Malaysia, as well as Uruguay and the Netherlands, had more than enough strength to win places without a formal vote. But the fourth seat was hotly contested by both Jordan and Mali, and until all four were filled, the Security Council could not meet.

Just when it seemed that there had to be a vote, Quaison-Sackey came up with his nonvote formula. "If the Assembly will allow me," he announced in his staccato Afro-Oxford accent, "I would request each head of delegation to call on me in my offices behind the podium and I shall then give each one the means of stating anonymously and in writing the preference of his delegation as regards the filling of the four vacancies on the Security Council. I shall inform the Assembly of the results of this consultation and I shall ask the Assembly whether, in the light of this information, it would be prepared to fill the vacancies without objection."

There was no objection. Awkward as the secret nonvoting procedure may have sounded, to the U.N.'s 115 member nations it was better than a formal vote--which would have forced the U.S. to challenge Russia's right to vote and ended the delicate search for a compromise on the financial-arrears question. So the ambassadors obediently lined up outside Quaison-Sackey's office, indicated their preferences on a slip of paper.

Trouble was, the secret nonballot failed to produce a winner--which, under the U.N. charter, must receive two-thirds of the votes. A second "consul tation" was called for, and a third, but although Jordan was unofficially ahead, Mali proved unsinkable. In the end, Quaison-Sackey forged a compromise: the two nations would split the two-year term, with Jordan seated first. The deal was approved "without objection," and Quaison-Sackey dismissed the Assembly until Jan. 18.

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