Representatives from 193 countries will elect the next secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) , an American and a Russian, on Thursday at the Parliament Palace in Bucharest. The election of leaders of United Nations technical agencies has received little public attention. But the stakes in this election will go far beyond the symbolic figure of a mysterious institution. US candidate Doreen Bogdan-Martin has held various positions at the ITU for nearly three decades, with a bland platform aimed at closing the digital divide and improving the organization’s digitization and efficiency. Russian candidate Rashid Ismailov has a similar platform for closing the digital divide, but at the same time wants to reduce the power of the United States and increase the sovereignty of nations. The current ITU Secretary General is Houlin Zhao from China, who is expected to support Ismailov. China proposed a new internet infrastructure called New IP in 2020. Although the Internet is not under the ITU’s jurisdiction, many fear that once Internet governance is brought under its jurisdiction, it may increase the fragmentation of the Internet: in some countries the Internet is free and open, in others it is controlled by the state.
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