June 15th has come and gone and Zoellick is the only game on H street even after calls for a new transparent process of appointing the president of the World Bank have emerged from different sources and countries. According to Reuters, a bank official said the board was expected to meet with Zoellick next week, with an eye toward finalizing the process by June 29 and having the new president in place on July 1 since no other nominations have been submitted. Continue reading →

Principal nominee for president of the World Bank Robert Zoellick is currently laying low after letting it slip two days ago that key positions in the Bank may be filled by his pet cats and rabbits. This comes after stinging criticism of former Bank president Paul Wolfowitz for appointing his own favourites. Continue reading →

As reported by Deep Insider, Monique Barbut was practising some “travails” to get the “dragon-lady” Robin a cushy job at GEF. Guess with only 18 months to go for the Bush Administration, his political followers are not welcomed, as ” must have employees “, with open arms in some corporations and dear Robyn does need a job. However, according to Al Kamen from Washington Post, Robin won’t be an ilk of Monique.

“The job apparently would have meant a two-step demotion in rank as well as a substantial — perhaps six-figure — decline in salary, according to the Government Accountability Project, which has been exposing various misdeeds and shortcomings at the bank.”

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Nominations for World Bank president close today, and barring a miracle, it will be a one horse race.

In Norway yesterday, Zoellick met with development minister Erik Solheim: “The Norwegian principled position is that this should be an open competition where everyone should be able to run – Chinese, Argentinian, whatever, Norwegian for that matter.  We will work with other governments to make such a procedure for future presidential appointments of the World Bank. That said, we think this is a very good proposal of Mr Zoellick as the new president of the World Bank.” Solheim also said that Europe’s prerogative to choose the head of the IMF should also be abandoned. Continue reading →

Liberal Democrat shadow international development secretary, Lynne Featherstone MP, has written to chancellor Gordon Brown and development secretary Hilary Benn calling on the British government to nominate another candidate or “failing that, to instruct the executive director on the board of the World Bank not to support the nomination”. Continue reading →