Some Reactions

AFP: Nigeria World Bank candidate salutes Kim, calls for change

FT: World Bank picks Kim as next head

Economist: Kim for president

The Atlantic: Shocking News About the Next World Bank Boss

BBC: Africa’s World Bank hopes dashed as Okonjo-Iweala loses

The Telegraph: A 20th century bank facing 21st century problems

Irish Times: World Bank accused of lack of transparency after US chief chosen

The Conversation: Three-Card Trick: Kim is new World Bank President


Jim Yong Kim’s statement after his appointment

From Lima, Jim Kim has been gracious and forward-looking in his official statement after his appointment was announced.

Let’s hope that the owners and the World Bank’s board will not again waste five years trying to forget what they did wrong this time in the appointment process, so that progressive voices will not have to again sit out a fulsome and reasoned discussion of the candidates’ merits.

But let’s not spend the next two years whining about this process.  Even a flawed process can have a good outcome.

Oxfam sums it up

 

Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stuart said: “Dr. Kim is an excellent choice for World Bank president and a true development hero. But we’ll never know if he was the best candidate for the job, because there was no true and fair competition.”

“The world deserved better than a selection process with a forgone conclusion. Poor and emerging countries are insisting the Bank be more accountable and open in how it does business. This sham process has damaged the institution, and sullied Dr. Kim’s appointment.”

Final Hours; or The Progressive’s Dilemma

Well folks today is the day.

It seems that the unnamed “A Bank Insider,” the most frequent poster to this blog, has taken off the gloves, with his declaration — not even couched as a prediction — that a Kim presidency would be “ineffective and tarnished” and would mean that the process in “now completely tarnished.”

So let me add a few words on behalf of those who have felt the process has been “completely tarnished” all along. I’m dragging out the overused “progressive” label as a convenience to describe those in NGOs/civil society who have been advocating for reform (or in some cases abolition) of the World Bank for many years.

For us, whichever way the decision goes represents a partial victory. If Ngozi is chosen it will be a victory for overturning the process, particularly if the US is defeated in procedural vote. It would change forever the assumptions of how the Bank is run, and hopefully would mean change in the quota system that governs how other high-level positions are chosen.

But it would also be a victory for the status quo. Continue reading