Monthly Archives: February 2019

A credible candidate and a credible process

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Ziad Hayek has been nominated by Lebanon’s Minister of Finance. With a credible résumé and a diverse international track record in finance, Hayek reportedly has an American passport, too, if that matters to the Bank’s board: it shouldn’t, and it’s not in the five criteria they’ve set out.

It’s interesting that a governor from the constituency group headed by Merza Hussain Hasan, who, as the longest-serving executive director also serves as dean of the board. Merza presides over the transparent, open, and merit-based selection process we’ve been promised, alas unaided—or, depending on your perspective, unhindered—by an executive search firm. Pour mémoire, any governor may nominate anyone.

Also, as dean of the Board, Merza surely has an obligation to operate with clean hands on nominations, and on the process. If he is concerned about the Bank’s credibility, and the board’s, he should realize that an ‘open, merit-based and transparent’ process would be greatly bolstered by a competitive selection. He should be taking steps to tease other serious candidates to offer themselves, as Ziad Hayez, with the support of Lebanon’s finance minister, has. Continue reading →

Sympathy for the Devil

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A personal reflection on the World Bank, Jim Kim, and David Malpass

As a U.S. citizen and a global justice activist, I’ve always opposed the US’s prerogative to nominate the World Bank president. And I certainly never expected to like any U.S. candidate for the World Bank presidency. In 2012, then, I was startled when Barack Obama nominated Jim Kim.

I had met Kim back in 1995 at a protest against the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC. It was no more than a handshake, but I was thrilled to meet the lead editor of Dying for Growth, a remarkable compendium of articles about the disastrous impact of IMF/WB policies on health around the world. It was one of the pillars of the multi-sectoral work I did with the 50 Years Is Enough U.S. Network of IMF/WB critics.

He had left Partners in Health well before his nomination and gone on to other, less movement-friendly positions, such as the presidency of Dartmouth College. But still, he was Jim Kim; he at least had been “one of us.” What was I, a dedicated campaigner against the U.S. monopoly on the WB presidency, to do?

I didn’t support the U.S. nomination of course, but I wasn’t so passionate in opposing it as I might otherwise have been. Less sentimental colleagues led the charge. But now that Kim has left, we know that he will be remembered primarily for turning the Bank into an even bigger booster of private-sector domination of development than it already was. So much so that he decided to bail on the job when Trump could nominate his replacement, apparently to get the obscene payoffs that await investment bankers with insider experience. Not exactly what I had been hoping for. Continue reading →