Mexico's Barron elected IPU Pres.

SAINT PETERSBURG, Russia, Oct 18 (KUNA) -- Mexico's Gabriela Cuevas Barron has become the 129th President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
Barron was on Wednesday elected at the IPU's 137th Assembly to lead the IPU for a three-year term, replacing Saber Hossain Chowdhury from Bangladesh who took office on 16 October 2014.
The IPU President is the political head of the organization and is elected to the post by the IPU membership through its Governing Council. Barron heads the Mexican Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, and the Mexico delegation to the IPU since 2012.
She was supported for the post by 287 votes, while her rival, Uruguay's Ivonne Passada, received 70 votes only.
A head of the elections, Barron had intensive consultations with all the regional groups represented at the IPU, among them the Arab and Muslim ones.
Barron's win has demonstrated the heavy weight of the Arab group at the IPU, Kuwait's National Assembly Speaker Marzouq Ali Al-Ghanim said in a press statement.
The Kuwaiti and the Arab delegations met with Barron before the elections, and then made a collective decision to support her for the post, he said.
The Arab group had received promises on certain conditions to back her, mainly to endorse Arabic as an official language of the union, and to back the Arab causes, as well as adopting ideas on amending the IPU's statute to gain it authority to punish member parliaments that might violate its basic principles, Al-Ghanim said.
This is the second time at the 137th Assembly that the Arab coordination leads to tangible output, after mustering support to list the plight of the Rohingya Muslim on the conference agenda. Al-Ghanim lauded the performance of the outgoing Chowdhury who was "one of the best who led the IPU since it was established (in 1889)". (pickup previous) as.msa