Woicke in the running? Worldbankpresident.org has received an anonymous 4am phone call alerting us that Peter Woicke may be lining up for the World Bank president job. Woicke, the outgoing head of the private sector support arm of the World Bank Group (the IFC), is apparently becoming a U.S. citizen in the next couple of weeks.

We realise that this is circumstantial evidence, at best, that he is going to be the next head of the Bank Group as a whole. But somebody has taken the trouble to call us, so there may be something behind it.

Knud Voecking, a campaigner from German NGO Urgewald who tracks the activities of the IFC, commented: "I guess it is highly unlikely that the Bush administration will support someone without a background in the industry [oil, gas, mining] or without a neocon background. Woicke was - at least upfront - a supporter of human rights regardless of the circumstances and in favour of all four core labour standards. This makes him a leftist for the Bush people".

Woicke is certainly not a leftist by everyone's standards. Before joining the World Bank Group in January 1999 he worked for 30 years for investment bank J.P. Morgan. In this respect he is similar to Wolfensohn, who also took on U.S. citizenship in order to become Bank president.

But are Woicke's Washington connections strong enough to take him to the top? Or could it be that our late night phone call from the States was part of a rumoured misinformation campaign by the White House? I heard this week that Christine Todd Whitman's name was floated by the Administration as a decoy.

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Alex Wilks ~ February 19, 2005

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