(Fwd) Worst case for WB prez: Bush's 2nd choice

[Patrick Bond <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The statement below by the European parliament represents the obvious
cul-de-sac trajectory associated with mild-mannered interimperialist
rivalry. It is the logical outcome of the approach the European NGOs have
been promoting in reaction to the USA's unilateral president-choosing at the
World Bank. It is ludicrous but predictable that the European
parliamentarians would grasp at this straw - a second Bushite candidate - to
try to derail Wolfowitz.

Here are the key arguments:

"that the European Union in 2004 has presented two candidates for the post
of the Managing Director of the IMF, with distinguished political profiles
facilitating an informed choice regarding indications of future directions
for the IMF; that the process of the selection of the final candidate has
been done in a more transparent manner and in an appropriate timeframe,
facilitating the input of the other shareholders; that the European
candidate for the Managing Director of the IMF stood against a candidate
nominated by another IMF member state, resulting in hearings of both
candidates at the Board of the IMF and an indicative vote producing a
majority for the European candidate."

This silly politician, Luisa Morgantini, simply ignores that the most
fascist candidate conceivable - Rodrigo de Rato - was chosen as a result of
this process. It's worth reminding all readers of de Rato's background, as
does Vicente Navarro in the counterpunch.org piece reproduced below. She
also confirms her desire to see 'other shareholders' play a more important
role - i.e., confirming the domination of the WB by a united front of
Northern capitalist countries, rather than even concede the possibility that
democratisation of voting power in multilateral agencies is worthy of
mention.

And who, then, would be Bush's 2nd choice, if that's what Morgantini
desires? No doubt, someone with identical politics but less baggage than
Wolfowitz. Is that what we in the global justice movement want? If not, why
aren't European NGOs condemning the inane yet dangerous line of argument
associated with Morgantini's opportunistic statement?

How depressing, this degeneration of European politicians' (and NGOs')
'solidarity' - into a fruitless desire for renewed interimperial
cooperation, with the joint objective of World Bank relegitimisation. They
had their chance with Wolfy1, and thoroughly blew it. The first time a
tragedy, now merely a farce.

Patrick

----- Original Message -----
European parliament statement on World Bank president.
URL:http://www.eurodad.org/articles/default.aspx?id=602

17/03/2005

The Chair of the Development Committee of the European Parliament, Louisa
Morgantini, has written on behalf of her Committee calling on European
governments "to open up the process to accept other candidates".

The letter further comments: "The President of the leading institution for
global development finance and policy should have intimate knowledge of
development issues, an excellent understanding for cross-cultural conflict
resolution, a convinced standing in support of multilateralism, and a
personal engagement for social equality and poverty eradication."
Complete letter: http://www.eurodad.org/uploadstore/cms/docs/Morgantini.doc
Luisa Morgantini
Chair of the Development Committee of the European Parliament
on behalf of the Development Committee
to the

- European Directors in the Board of the World Bank and their respective
national Ministries
- US Director in the Board of the World Bank and the Secretary of the US
Treasury
- European Commission
- Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union

Declaration on the occasion of the nomination of the candidate of the United
States of America for President of the World Bank

On March 15, US-President George Bush announced that he has nominated Mr.
Paul Wolfowitz to become the new President of the World Bank. If tradition
is followed the Board of Directors of the World Bank is likely to approve
Mr. Wolfowitz as the incoming President of this institution very soon.

Members of the Development Committee of the European Parliament note with
great concern that the selection process of the chief executive officer of
the most important international development institution lacks minimal
requirements for legitimate governance. We encourage European governments to
ask the US to open up the process to accept other candidates.

The President of the leading institution for global development finance and
policy should have intimate knowledge of development issues, an excellent
understanding for cross-cultural conflict resolution, a convinced standing
in support of multilateralism, and a personal engagement for social equality
and poverty eradication.

We regret that the reform process for the selection of the chief officers of
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that originated with the
rejection of the European candidate for the post of IMF Managing Director,
has never been completed by the respective Boards of both Bretton Woods
institutions. However,  we recognize that the 2004 selection process of the
chief officer of the IMF has introduced some novelty procedures which we
request the US Government as a minimum to take into account in the present
selection process for the President of the World Bank.

In this sense, we remind

- that the European Union in 2004 has presented two candidates for the post
of the Managing Director of the IMF, with distinguished political profiles
facilitating an informed choice regarding indications of future directions
for the IMF

- that the process of the selection of the final candidate has been done in
a more transparent manner and in an appropriate timeframe, facilitating the
input of the other shareholders

- that the European candidate for the Managing Director of the IMF stood
against a candidate nominated by another IMF member state, resulting in
hearings of both candidates at the Board of the IMF and an indicative vote
producing a majority for the European candidate.

We would urge the Government of the United States not to reverse this
progress in the selection procedure, which represents only a minimum level
of what is required in terms of transparency and democracy at the
international level.

We remind the Government of the United States that it has agreed, together
with the international community, in the frame of the Millennium Development
Goals and the Final Declaration of the International High Level Conference
on Financing for Development in Monterrey, to improve global partnership and
strive for the principle of good governance at all institutional levels.

We ask the European Directors and all Board Directors in the World Bank to
facilitate an open and transparent process of the selection of the President
of the World Bank and to keep an open mind should any member of the World
Bank want to bring forward its candidate.

We ask the next General Affairs and External Relations Council of 24 April
to deliver a statement on this issue.


__________________________________________________

The New Head of the IMF - Who Is Rodrigo Rato?

by Vicente Navarro

Vicente Navarro is Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University,
USA and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. He can be reached at:
navarro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Rodrigo Rato has been appointed as the new managing director of the
International Monetary Fund. I have read the biographical notes and
references to his career that have appeared in the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other major papers in the U.S.,
and nowhere have there appeared those key elements of his biography that
could shed light on his economic policies. As I have written about in a
previous article (The US Media's Double Standard. The Case of Mr. Aznar,
Friend of Bush, CounterPunch, August 21, 2003), one of the most unsettling
developments in the main stream US media is their right wing shift.

For example, the US press saluted Mr. Aznar, past president of the Spanish
government, as a "great friend of the U.S." (confusing, as usual, the
U.S.government with the U.S. population), without once making reference to
his fascist past and current ultra-right wing positions.

The same is happening now with Mr. Rodrigo Rato, Mr. Aznar's Minister of
Economy, who is responsible for the dismantling of the Spanish welfare
state. Mr. Rato is of the ultra-right. While in Aznar's cabinet, he
supported such policies as making religion a compulsory subject in secondary
schools, requiring more hours of schooling in religion than in mathematics,
undoing the progressivity in the internal revenue code, funding the
Foundation dedicated to the promotion of francoism (i.e., Spanish fascism),
never condemning the fascist dictatorship, and so on.

In the economic arena, he dramatically reduced public social expenditures as
a way of eliminating the public deficit of the Spanish government, and was
the person responsible for developing the most austere social budget of all
the governments of the European Community. The elimination of the deficit in
the Spanish government's budget has had an enormous social cost. The Spanish
welfare state (public transfers like pensions, and social services such as
education and health services) had been very limited, due to forty years of
fascist dictatorship. Franco was known not only for his enormous
repression--for every political assassination carried out by Mussolini,
Franco killed 10,000--but also for his non-existent social sensibility.

As a consequence, when Franco died in 1975 , the percentage of the
population with poor education (less than six years of schooling) was the
highest in Europe (84per cent), and the public social expenditures (the
funds to support the welfare state) were extremely low (14 per cent of GDP),
much lower than the average in Continental Europe (22 per cent of GNP). This
deficit of eight points was reduced after the establishment of democracy,
(and very much under the social democratic governments, 1982-1993), to reach
only four points in 1993. In that year, Spain spent 24 per cent of the GNP
in public social expenditures, while the EU-15 average was 28 per cent. In
1991-93 there was a fight within the socialist party that ended with the
victory of the so-called social-liberals (the equivalent of the Democratic
Leadership Council of the U.S.). One of its leaders, Solbes, (later the
person in charge of fiscal austerity in the EU-15 as European Commissions
for Economics and Financial Affairs) took over the Ministry of Economy of
the social democratic government and inaugurated a whole series of cuts in
social expenditures that led to the socialist party'S defeat in 1996, at the
hands of Aznar's Popular Party.

Rato then became the new Minister of Economy. During his tenure as Minister
(1996-2004), the pensions and health expenditures were cut even more
savagely than during the Solbes period of 1993-1996. In pensions, for
example, Rato increased the Spanish deficit of pension expenditures per
capita relative to the EU-15 average by 21per cent and the deficit of public
medical care expenditures to the EU-15 average by30 per cent. The
consequence of these policies is that Spain, rather than catching up with
the EU-15, has been losing ground quite dramatically. Today, the deficit of
social expenditures of Spain compared with the average of the EU-15
(measured as percentages of the GNP) is the same as when Franco died.

At the practical level, these policies have come to mean that the average
time of a visit to the doctor in the National Health Services is only six
minutes; that a 14 year old student in a public school has the academic
knowledge of an average 13 year old student in the rest of the EU-15, that
Spanish pensions are the lowest in the EU-15; that the percentage of
children 0-3 years old in attendance at public child care centers is only 8
per cent, the lowest in the EU-15; that the level of temporary work (called
"shit work" by the trade unions) in Spain is the highest in the EU-15, 35
per cent of the labor force, and a long etcetera of other social problems.
The quality of life of the popular classes (working and middle class) has
indeed declined during these social austerity years, as dictated by Mr.
Rato. Mr. Rato (and Mr. Aznar) has paraded triumphantly around the EU-15,
claiming that Spain is in the top of the league because it is the first
member of the EU-15 to reach the stability pact, i.e., public deficit zero.

And none other than Blair's Minister of Economy, Gordon Brown, became Rato's
main advocate for the IMF position. Nowhere mentioned is the enormous costs
this "success" has had on the quality of life of average folks in Spain. And
these are the same policies that Mr. Rato is going to follow in the IMF,
policies that have caused enormous pain and harm to the Spanish people, and
will now be implemented world-wide.

Nowhere, however, have the mainstream media reported on such important
dimensions of Mr. Rato's tenure as Minister of Economy of Spain. Quite
remarkable!

Vicente Navarro's profile of incoming IMF head Rato
 www.counterpunch.org
19 June 2004