The best choice for reform at Turtle Bay is Serbia’s Vuk Jeremic.

There’s an election on, and the top candidates include a Vladimir Putin favorite and a lifelong socialist who mismanaged a global humanitarian organization. We speak of the race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General.

That was the state of play when the U.N.’s Security Council took its fourth straw poll this month to suss out the leading contenders to succeed Ban Ki-moon, whose decade at Turtle Bay ends in December. Topping the list of 10 candidates is António Guterres, a former Socialist Portuguese Prime Minister who was recently the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Mr. Guterres is the favorite of Western Europeans, despite a UNHCR record that the U.N.’s Internal Audit Division lambasted in April for failing to comply with rules, safeguard U.N. assets, provide accurate financials and conduct effective operations.

U.N. tradition also dictates that the position rotate among regional blocs, and now it’s Eastern Europe’s turn. Among that group, the current favorite is Slovakian foreign minister Miroslav Lajcák, who was a Czechoslovak diplomat under the former Communist dictatorship and holds a doctorate from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.