(NEW YORK) MintPress — And the winner is…..not surprisingly……Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President Barack Obama’s choice to become the next head of the World Bank after current president Robert Zoellick ends his five-year term on June 30.
Indeed, ever since the bank, which provides loans to developing countries for infrastructure, health care and other programs, was created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the presidency has gone to an American. Similarly, the top job at its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund, also founded at the conference, has gone to a European.
But this year, the Washington, D.C.-based bank was under increasing pressure from emerging economies to open the selection process to candidates they argued are better placed to understand the needs of poor countries and make the bank deliver on its promise to provide the necessary help.
As a result, the 25 board members chose between Kim and Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a renowned economist and former World Bank managing director. Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has overseen Nigeria’s historic debt relief program, spearheaded the reform of the country’s public sector and championed the creation of the excess crude account that helped provide Nigeria with a buffer during the economic crisis of 2008-2009.
On Friday, Colombia’s Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister and a professor at Colombia University in New York, withdrew from the race and threw his support behind Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala. “It is clear that this is becoming no longer a competition on the merits of the candidates, but a political exercise,” he said in a letter to the World Bank.
Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, won the job with the help of Washington’s allies in Europe, Japan and Canada, who together have the majority of the votes. Unlike World Bank elections in the past, the decision was not unanimous. “The final nominees received support from different member countries, which reflected the high caliber of the candidates,” said the Bank in announcing the decision.
Transparency in question
Critics contend that Obama clearly took political considerations into account when nominating another American instead of backing Okonjo-Iweala, and many have voiced doubts about whether the election process itself is democratic and transparent.
“From what I’ve heard there are serious concerns about the level of transparency,” said South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan. ‘The invitation was open to anybody to nominate a candidate…the question is whether the process subsequent to that has followed through on the basis of democratic tenets.”
Still, in the wake of his nomination in March, Kim did conduct an active campaign to win the post, going on an around-the-world “listening tour” to rally support for his candidacy. In a recent interview he said that he wanted to make the bank as inclusive as possible as its pursues its goals of fighting poverty and supporting economic growth.
Kim will oversee a staff of 9,000 economists and development experts as well as a loan portfolio that reached $258 billion last year.
Right for the job?
While critics argue that Kim has no formal financial training, his proponents say it was an inspired choice on the part of the President.
Born in South Korea to a family that emigrated to the U.S. when he was five, Kim is the first non-Caucasian president of the World Bank and only the second non-native American. James Wolfensohn, the bank’s ninth president, was born in Australia and became a U.S. citizen.
“My family’s experience has given me an unshakable optimism about what can happen to the poorest people,” said Kim in a recent interview.
In addition, Kim’s background is more related to development work than that of presidents who came from the corporate or political worlds. He is a renowned health expert, having received his medical degree from Harvard University, a trained anthropologist and a former director of the HIV/Aids department at the World Health Organization. He also co-founded the charity Partners in Health, which runs community-focused health programs in poor countries, in 1987.
In a statement to the bank’s executive board last week, Kim said he is “not afraid to challenge existing orthodoxies.”
Neither does his former opponent, Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala. Despite Kim’s victory, she doesn’t consider herself defeated. The process “will never ever be the same again,” she said. “Who gets into the World Bank — we have shown we can contest this thing and Africa can produce people capable of running the entire architecture.”