The Board said yesterday: “The Board will start the nomination process for a new president immediately.” This implies that it is open to receive candidates right now.
The UK had already publicly committed itself to pushing for a merit-based appointment process. We’re not seeing any signs of this publicly (their line at the moment is “it’s too early to talk about the next president’, but the statement from the Board above would indicate otherwise).
Of course, it could be that as they’ve already taken a controversial position in the resignation process, they feel it would be very difficult for them to take the lead on this one. However, there may be other governments that have already committed to an open election process. If so, they could speak first and provide cover for the UK.
At the IMF the principal has been established that other candidates can be considered as well as the one suggested by the (unofficial) appointing body – in the case of the Fund, the Europeans. Peter Steinbrueck, the German finance minister, has said that the United States should be given ‘first say’. But that would leave room for other governments to put forward other candidates very shortly afterwards……