US Monopoly on World Bank Presidency Challenged

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives at the Osan Air Base in Seoul, South Korea, on March 25, 2012. Obama arrived in South Korea to attend the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit to be held on March 26-27. (Xinhua)

The United States on Friday named its candidate to lead the World Bank (WB), but this time the selection is not a solo any more.

Two candidates endorsed by developing countries unprecedentedly challenged the U.S. monopoly on the top post of the WB, the leading global financial institution for fighting poverty and supporting development.

SURPRISE PICK

As the deadline loomed, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the nomination of Jim Yong Kim, a Korean-American global health expert, as candidate to replace outgoing Robert Zoellick, whose term as WB president expires at the end of June.

"It's time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency," Obama said as he made the announcement.

"Jim has truly global experience," said Obama, "He has worked from Asia to Africa to the Americas, from capitals to small villages. His personal story exemplifies the great diversity to our country."

The selection is commonly considered as a surprise pick because Kim, the current Dartmouth College president, has hardly been talked about for the nominee in the past week.

The U.S. traditional choices of the WB head have been either politicians or business leaders since the bank was founded after World War II.

Obama chose Kim out of several more well-known candidates, such as Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Lawrence Summers, former director of the president's National Economic Council.

Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International economics, called it a "quite unusual choice."

Yukon Huang, a senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua the message the White House conveyed was that the nominee is a man of the world - born in Korea, raised and educated in the United States with professional interests that are highly relevant for developing countries.

U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs, who openly campaigned for the job and finally withdrew, said in an article posted on the Washington Post website that "without incisive leadership, the bank has often seemed like just a bank."

"And unfortunately, Washington has backed at the helm bankers and politicians who lack the expertise to fulfill the institution's unique mandate," Sachs added.

UNPRECEDENTED COMPETITION

Following the close of the nomination process, the WB announced two more candidates for the position: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia.

For the first time, two non-American candidates will compete with a U.S. nominee. What's more, both of them have impressive credentials as economists and diplomats.

Okonjo-Iweala, the current Nigerian finance minister, was nominated by three African countries - South Africa, Angola and her native land. She has profound working experience in the multinational World Bank and her capability has been widely recognized.

Ocampo, endorsed by Brazil, has strong academic background and held posts in the Colombian government as well as the United Nations.

Although Yukon Huang said Kim's selection was not driven by domestic political considerations but by his professional qualifications, Subramanian doubted whether Kim is a better choice in terms of international experience and management.

Domenico Lombardi, a former WB board official said the impressive background of both Ocampo and Okonjo-Iweala signals a big shift and really reflects a game change. He said this is the first time in history for a truly contested election.

However, analysts believe that the United States is very much likely to laugh last as it is the WB's largest donor and has the largest voting share.

Uri Dadush and Moises Naim, senior associates at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, criticized the way that top leaders of the WB and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been selected.

They said the leaders of both the WB and IMF are selected through "opaque, quota-driven negotiations," which have been defied by the meritocracy.

"No well-run global company selects its senior management this way," they added.

Rogerio Studart, the Brazilian member of the WB's 25-member executive board, said there was a strong sense among developing countries that the selection of Zoellick's successor should involve a broader discussion about the bank's future.


By （Editor：厉振羽） 
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Asean needs to rise to its own loftier level

After nearly 45 years, issues remain for Asean to sort out, ponder over and resolve satisfactorily.

SOME developments have lately resulted in multiple challenges confronting Asean. Chief among these is the lack of understanding of Asean, its origins and its purposes, notably within Asean member countries themselves.

Since its inception in 1967, Asean has tended to avoid calling a spade a spade for reasons of national sensitivities or avoiding controversy. The founding meeting in Bangkok that year was even described as an effort to improve economic relations, even though more serious geopolitical issues such as Indonesia’s relations with Malaysia and Singapore were at stake.

Another reason for the lack of an Asean awareness among Asean peoples is that official proceedings have been dominated and even monopolised by national elites. Even with economic development as a key issue from the beginning, the Asean Business Council took three decades to be established.

Security drill: Cambodian riot police during an exercise to prepare for the upcoming Asean summit in Phnom Penh. Cambodia hosts the 20th Asean Summit next month. — EPA

 

Social and cultural issues would have to take even longer. Everything had to undergo a laborious process of initial proposal, official consideration, outsourced study (such as an Eminent Persons Group), considered refinement, likely revisions, possible horse trading, formal approval and final adoption.
Even if the entire process is necessary, it could also be expedited. More important yet, parallel processes could occur to dovetail the sequential stages.

That would mean involving more people and agencies than just the heads of government, key ministers and secretariat staff. And that would imply educating, engaging and empowering more people in Asean countries about Asean and its work.

Thus the third reason for the lack of awareness is that little or nothing has been done to inform and involve more people in the region. It might be said that an inherent danger lies in a new generation of Asean citizens growing up under-informed about regional imperatives, except that even the older generation is equally unaware.

Some critics have blamed the custom of consensus-reaching for the plodding pace, but other regional organisations like the EU have not experienced consensualism as a nagging problem. The respective agendas of individual governments, which change quicker and less predictably in some Asean countries than in others, could be a factor.

Nonetheless, Asean’s challenges of economic productivity and competitiveness, geopolitical confidence-building and comfort levels, and socio-cultural peace and stability remain. If anything, developments such as a rising China and India, a resurgent Russia and a revitalised US foreign policy focus on East Asia only make Asean cohesiveness more urgent yet also more fraught.

Asean itself has responded by scheduling an Asean Community by 2015 comprising three pillars: an Economic Community, a Security Community and a Socio-cultural Community. Could this goal be too ambitious, since it had taken 21 years just to convene the third Asean summit?

To help the process along, Malaysia’s Foreign Policy Study Group recently held a roundtable conference on Malaysia-Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam relations in strengthening Asean Regionalism.

The non-official occasion was intended to complement, not compete with, formal Asean processes and proceedings. Still, a fundamental question asked by some delegates was why the event had to be limited to just four of the 10 Asean countries.

The answer should be obvious: limits on resources including time, and a limited effort such as this had to start somewhere. More Asean countries would participate in future roundtables, and Asean itself provides for small initial efforts in its “10 - x” formula.

There were reasons for the four Asean countries that participated through their retired officials and student representatives: Malaysia and Indonesia as the key founding members of Asean, Thailand as Asean’s origin in the 1967 Bangkok Declaration, and Vietnam in generally being regarded as the main country among the newer (CLMV) members.

Another question concerned more frequent use of currency swaps among Asean countries, and the prospect of greater reciprocal use of national currencies in bilateral trade. This would avoid exchange rate costs with the use of a third-country currency such as the dollar or euro.

Some participants thought the membership of 10 countries was sizeable and a likely source of problems in discouraging common agreement. If that is an issue now, it could grow since Timor Leste is poised to be the 11th member, with Papua New Guinea conceivably waiting in the wings.

Some foreign participants credited Malaysia with having achieved considerable success in economic and educational development. The disparities within Asean also mean that each country could excel in a particular area, so it would help all members if a panel of best practices for a variety of sectors could be established, with contributions from each country based on its experiences and achievements.

A reference was made to Asean’s policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of member nations by way of a criticism of its seeming inaction. However, that policy as derived from Bandung is a universal principle common to all regional groupings, without which unwelcome and hostile unilateral actions would be rife.

More to the point, Asean appears to have adopted non-intervention to the extent of not even remarking on the travails of a member country even when problems spill over into a neighbouring country. In practice, concepts like “non-intervention” are largely defined by Asean to begin with, so Asean can act without seeing itself as acting.

An underlying but unspoken issue was that Asean countries are fully capable of handling the problems within and between them. There is no basis for major power intervention, since that would unduly complicate and compound the original problem.

Cross-border issues are routinely managed, while rival maritime claims linger. The only enduring problem is an inability to form an all-Asean military force, even if that is desirable.

To help boost Asean awareness, Asean scholarships, student exchanges, an Asean Day in August, a Visit Asean Year promoting the region as a tour package, and a popular talent-entertainment programme appealing to young people are possibilities. But until today, even an Asean lane at airport immigration counters as proposed by a former Malaysian foreign minister more than 20 years ago has still not taken off.

In reshaping an Asean for the times, its basic ingredients of peace, freedom, neutrality, amity and cooperation need to be maintained while addressing current needs and challenges. But whether there is any Asean leader today with the requisite regional vision is still very much an open question.
  
Behind The Headlines By Bunn Nagara 

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Politics, Religion don't mix!

In U.S., a growing unease at mixing politics with prayer

By Stephanie Simon

REUTERS - Americans are increasingly uneasy with the mingling of religion and politics, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, in the midst of a campaign season punctuated by tussles over the role of faith in the public square.

Back in 2001, when Pew first asked the question, just 12 percent of Americans complained that their politicians talked too much about religion.

That number has risen steadily ever since and hit a record high in the new poll: 38 percent of Americans, including 24 percent of Republicans, now say their political leaders are overdoing it with their expressions of faith and prayer.

And more Americans than ever, 54 percent, believe churches should keep out of politics. That's up from 43 percent in 1996, according to the Pew Research Center.

The national poll of 1,503 adults, which has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, was conducted in early March, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was ramping up its vigorous campaign against a new federal mandate requiring all insurance companies to provide free birth control.

The bishops continue to press that fight. Just last week, they issued a statement declaring they were "strongly unified and intensely focused" on battling the contraception mandate.

A leading voice in that campaign, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, this week was promoted to Archbishop of Baltimore by Pope Benedict XVI.

Peter Steinfels, co-director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, said Americans have generally tolerated and even encouraged religious leaders to speak out on broad political issues, including capital punishment, immigration and poverty.

MORE SKEPTICAL

But Americans have long been uncomfortable with religious leaders directly involved in partisan campaigns, he said.

In recent years, most notably in the birth control battle, that line has been blurred, Steinfels said - which may account for the growing unease on display in the Pew poll.

"Religious leaders ought to be worried," Steinfels said. "We're seeing Americans becoming more skeptical" about the propriety of religious involvement in politics.

The bishops have sought to portray the contraceptive mandate as one prong of a broad attack on religion by state and federal authorities. The leading Republican presidential candidates have echoed that rhetoric on the campaign trail, accusing the Obama Administration of declaring war on religious freedom.

The Pew poll found evidence that argument is resonating with Catholics. Roughly one in four U.S. voters is Catholic and they are a crucial swing vote in several states pivotal to the 2012 presidential election, like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The poll found 25 percent of Catholics perceive the Obama administration as unfriendly to religion, up from 15 percent in a Pew poll taken in August of 2009.

The increase is even sharper among white Catholics, jumping to 31 percent from 17 percent, Pew found.
Among the public overall, 23 percent describe the Obama administration as unfriendly to religion, up from 17 percent in 2009. But another recent poll suggests the "war on religion" argument isn't gaining traction with most adults.

A national survey conducted this month by the Public Religion Research Institute found a majority of Americans, 56 percent, do not believe religious liberty is under siege.

Republicans, senior citizens and white evangelicals were most likely to see a looming threat to religious freedom.

(Reporting By Stephanie Simon; editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Todd Eastham)