Out of 167 delegations from Interpol member countries attending the Interpol General Assembly at the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center, only two countries had proposed their representatives for selection as Interpol President, namely Meng Hongwei of China and Sebastian Neditunga from Namibia.
The selection committee consisting of delegations from Afghanistan, France, Laos, Rwanda and Slovenia finally declared Meng Hongwei as the new Interpol president.
Meng, who is currently Chinas deputy security minister, replaced Mireille Ballestrazzi from France, whose term of office had ended.
He is the first Chinese to hold the strategic post in the Interpol, which was established in 1914 and has become the worlds second biggest organization after the United Nations.
China has been an Interpol member since 1984.
Indonesia Police Chief General Tito Karnavian expressed gratefulness over the success of the implementation of the 85th Interpol conference.
"We are grateful everything has gone smoothly and according to schedule without any disruption and has even been appreciated by all delegations," he said at the closing of the event on Thursday.
He said almost all delegations had hailed the conference because it has been carried out "professionally and all programs have gone well, security was very good and performances that were done by police cadets at the Farewell Dinner last night were able to impress that Indonesia Police is modern and advanced.
Tito said the number of delegations was recorded as the largest in the Interpol General Assemblys history reaching 167 (including 164 member countries and three observer countries).
"There were 167 delegations attending. This is a new record. It broke the record. It was this time that an Interpol meeting drew a large number of delegations. It was a special achievement," he said.
He said there were two factors that played a role in making the event successful, which were the right location for the event and delegations confidence in Indonesias security condition.
"They believed in the security stability in Indonesia despite the dynamic situation in some regions," he said.
The meeting from November 7 to 10 was opened by Vice President Jusuf Kalla and closed by Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and had discussed three big issues: terrorism, organized crimes and cyber crimes.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
