And the winner of the poll is…

As we closed the World Bank president poll this week, over 15,000 people had voted for their favourite developing country candidate.

The result? Well, our friends in Indonesia came out in force, resulting in a landslide victory for Sri Mulyani Indrawati, an Indonesian economist and one of the current Managing Directors of the World Bank Group, who beat her opponents with a staggering 87% of the votes.

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Is this finally the week? Reality check in the US

Inside sources in Washington are abuzz. It seems this will be the week according to people in the know, and Zoellick will imminently be announcing his attention to not seek a second term. They didn’t have an exact date for the announcement – could be Tuesday or as late as Friday. But now is really the time to start thinking about the processes – after all a well designed process would have started 6 weeks ago.

So the post yesterday by Nancy Birdsall over at CGD provides a timely look into the US political constraints. She asks:

Can the Obama White House in an election year, facing a Congress suspicious of a globally honored president, eschew pushing through its own American candidate? …

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