Om Birla congratulates Portugal MP Duarte Pacheco for being elected as IPU president
Nov 02, 2020
New Delhi [India], November 3 : Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday congratulated Portugal Member of Parliament Duarte Pacheco for being elected as President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
In a message to Pacheco, Birla said, "Your success in the election is a success of your vision of strengthening parliamentary diplomacy." Birla hoped that Pacheco's belief in ideals of democracy, rule of law, consensus building, and multilateralism would help in building a stronger and more focused IPU in sync with the changing times.
"With your rich professional experience, leadership skills, commitment, and zeal, IPU will surely be able to move towards the attainment of our common goals of an equal, inclusive and peaceful world along with achieving sustainable development," the LS Speaker added.
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.
Earlier, the Governing Council of IPU, Geneva resumed its business during the 206th session in a virtual format. The election process to elect the new IPU President through a remote electronic secret ballot.
The Indian Parliamentary Delegation led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and consisting of Poonamben Hematbhai Maadam, MP, and Swapan Dasgupta, MP attended the meeting of the IPU Governing Council. The Secretary-General Lok Sabha, Snehlata Srivastava also attended the virtual meeting.
During the day, the election for filing up the vacancies in the IPU Executive Committee was also held. During the election, Laurence Fehlmann Rielle from Switzerland and Beatriz Argimon from Uruguay were unanimously elected to the IPU Executive Committee.
Further, the IPU Secretary-General presented the summary of the financial results of IPU for the period 2019-2020. In this context, the financial report of the internal auditor was made available to the participants. Also, the budget for the year 2021-22 was presented by the Chairman of the IPU sub-committee on finance which was duly approved by the members of the Council.
The Secretary-General of IPU presented the report on the Fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament (5WCSP) organised by IPU and Parliament of Austria in a virtual format from August 19 to 20, 2020.
