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Who should get the World Bank job?
**Despite my belief that this is a done deal, it is surely interesting to imagine how a more desirable and honest scenario could unfold. In any fair contest where the decision is based on merit, either Ocampo or Okonjo-Iweala should win.
THE Board of
Executive Directors of the
World Bank will select a new president for the Bank next week. Three candidates are vying for the position — Jim Yong Kim, a US
national and president of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian national and professor at Columbia University, New York; and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian national and minister of finance, Nigeria.
The Board has promised that the new president would be chosen by a meritbased, open, fair and transparent competition. However, it is not clear if this means that candidates would be offered the opportunity to present their manifestoes — and make them public — detailing how they would run the World Bank, what they see as the priorities and challenges, what changes they would make, etc.
In an earlier column on this page (The Daily Star, March 6), I had argued for ending the US chokehold on the presidency of the World Bank and Europe's similar enti-dement to put one of its own as the head of the Internatio nal Monetary Fund. The current system is unfair to the developing nations who are most affected by these institutions' work. It is also an inefficient way to find the most qualified leader. This does not mean an American or a European should not be appointed, but that candi-dates should be selected based on merit and not nationality.
Barack Obama's choice of Dr. Kim was a surprise. He is a doctor and a health expert but has no obvious hands-on experience of finance, economics or government and a narrow specialisation in health, particularly HIV/Aids. The US president believes Kim's East Asian origins and his time as director of HIV/Aids at the World Health Organisation will garner support from developing countries and that the Europeans will not rock the boat.
Kim's understanding of public health is deep and many-faceted; it ranges from academic expertise in medicine and anthropology to hands-on work on healthcare delivery in developing countries. A health background takes the Bank in some sense back to focusing
on the poor countries and to countryspecific intervention. However, the Bank's role needs to evolve towards tackling global problems such as climate change, water shortages, low agricultural productivity, and reducing poverty.
Kim lacks recognition among the world's development community. More impor-tantly, he lacks the experience and knowledge of finance and broad-based development that will be essential as the world continues to recover from the global financial crisis and works to prevent its recurrence.
Kim also lacks the top-level diplomatic and financial experience of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, his rival and Nigerian finance minister. He also does not have the impressive economics experience of Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former Colombian finance minister. In contrast to Kim, the other two candidates for the position are development professionals.
Okonjo-Iweala has a long history at the World Bank and is a much-heralded finance minister in Nigeria, helping the country to gain its first ever credit rating. Her deep experience in international and national
issues of economic management would help in increasing the Bank's effectiveness. A managing director at the Bank until last August, she could hit the ground running and get things done from the start. She has been supported by an array of former World Bank officials. That said, she was also the second in command to the current World Bank President Robert Zoellick. The World Bank needs to move on.
Ocampo has the utmost credibility as a policy-maker and diplomat; he works well with both the developed and developing countries alike. As the finance minister of Colombia, he has intimate knowledge and experience working with both small and large farmers and on infrastructure and investment projects needed for sustainable growth. This experience will be essential given the current global food crisis.
His success in Colombia landed him the presidency of the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean — which he turned into Latin America's premier development institution by refocusing it on open trade, export competitiveness, innovation and policy alleviation. He was then tapped to be UN Under-
Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), an organisation that he also significantly reformed.
While I was working in Geneva as the director of the UN Regional Commission in Europe, I had the opportunity to work with both Dr. Kim and Ocampo. Kim
understands the social roots of disease and had shown acute managerial skills in working on treatment of drug-resistance tuberculosis in Peru. He is very adroit politically. But his lack of experience in finance and development related issues means that he has to be trained on the job — an idea that the Bank can ill-afford.
Ocampo, with whom I had more direct contacts, has moved between policy and academia throughout his professional life. Moreover, he has dealt with all the main areas of development policy: economic, social, environmental and political. This unusual mix of expertise makes him the ideal candidate for the president's job.
The United States has put its best foot forward by nominating Jim Yong Kim. Imagine, for a moment, that the US and Europe could muster the will to step back and let the process evolve unencumbered by political pressure and horse trading. Kim might actually prevail — or he may not. But if he did, he would have the world behind him, and the wind in his sails.
Despite my belief that this is a done deal, it is surely interesting to imagine how a more desirable and honest scenario could unfold. In any fair contest where the decision is based on merit, either Ocampo or Okonjo-Iweala should win.
Despite the appearance of a contested and competitive selection process, it is almost certain that Kim will be the next president of the World Bank. He only needed one vote, that of the US president, and he has got it. As I had written earlier, the process is a lamentable charade where everyone directly involved makes the effort to pretend that the selection process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Through no fault of his, this process will undermine Kim's legitimacy and authority from day one.
What may have been lost with the selection of Dr. Kim, however, is a chance for the US to chart a new future for the Bank in a world where many of its longstanding clients have started to grow rapidly and graduate from the need for its support.
The writer is a Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Marquette University.
Email: abdur.chowdhury@marquette.edu