In an attempt to improve the transparency of a process that has traditionally taken place behind the scenes, the candidates are going to stand up in front of the assembly to present their proposals and be submitted to scrutiny by the member states.

António Guterres, who until the end of 2015 was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is to be the third of nine candidates to take over from Ban Ki-Moon, whose term of office finishes at the end of this year.

Wednesday will be the turn of the former president of Slovenia, Danilo Turk, former vice president of Croatia, Vesna Pusic, and the former foreign minister of Moldavia Natalia Guerman.

On Thursday the assembly will hear from the Macedonian Srgjan Kerim, who chaired the UN general assembly between 2007 and 2008, and the former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, who formalised her application last week.

The interviews start today with the former prime minister and until recently the foreign minister of Montenegro, Igor Luksic, followed by the general director of UNESCO, the Bulgarian Irina Bokova, before António Guterres rounds up the day’s interviews.

Normally, according to an unwritten rule, the job has rotated around the different regions and theoretically this time it should be Eastern Europe.

However, as Efe news agency said, the countless novelties introduced to improve the transparency and make the election more democratic, mean the expectations are now “crystallised” on António Guterres and Helen Clark.