•Press Release Globalization and Trade World
March 23, 2012
Deference to U.S. Nomination Must Give Way to a Democratic and Transparent Process, However
For Immediate Release: March 23, 2012
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460
Washington, D.C.– The Obama administration’s announcement that it will nominate health expert and Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim for World Bank president represents a historic milestone in the institution’s history, with the U.S. nominating, for the first time, a qualified candidate, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today.
“This is a huge step forward. If Kim becomes World Bank President, he’ll be the first qualified president in 68 years,” Weisbrot said. “Kim’s nomination is a victory for all the people, organizations, and governments that stood up to the Obama administration and demanded an open, merit-based process.”
Weisbrot noted that much of Kim’s career was with Partners in Health, which Kim co-founded. “Partners in Health is a uniquely dynamic and enormously capable organization that has implemented important changes in approaches to preventing and treating diseases and other health problems, and Kim deserves much credit for that.”
Weisbrot noted, “However, the Bank’s process is still deeply flawed because the majority of the world’s countries are not really involved and I hope that for the next presidency, they will come together long in advance to agree on a candidate.”
Weisbrot noted the importance of Jeffrey Sachs’ candidacy as having busted open the process and raised the bar for whom could be nominated. Sachs’ campaigning for the Bank’s presidency was unprecedented in its openness, in Sachs’ platform of reform for the Bank, and in terms of Sachs’ qualifications as an economist with extensive experience in economic development and as a health expert, who, like Kim, has worked to fight diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
“Once Sachs was nominated, it was clear it would be very difficult for the Obama administration to follow past practice and simply choose, again, a political insider or a banker,” Weisbrot said.
Weisbrot noted that Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s nomination by several African countries today also represents an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. government’s traditional domination in choosing the next World Bank president.
“Developing nations have stood up to the U.S. and transformed the process – first by nominating Sachs, and then by nominating Okonjo-Iweala. This is a historic and irreversible shift. Next time it will almost certainly be even more democratic, and we’ll again see qualified candidates, and not just cronies, nominated to helm the Bank. Now let’s have an open debate between the candidates so that the best person for the job may be chosen.”
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