IMF looks for new chief amid search for relevance
by Veronica Smith
7/10/2007
As the International Monetary Fund set into motion its search for a new chief, analysts
said the multilateral organization needs a fresh perspective as it struggles for credibility.
On Tuesday, the European Union appeared to coalesce around France's candidate, a former
finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to succeed the departing Rodrigo Rato.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy picked the socialist, who failed to clinch his party's nomination
in the recent presidential elections that brought Sarkozy to power.
Under an increasingly criticized gentleman's agreement, Europe chooses the head of the IMF
and the United States picks the president of the World Bank, the IMF's sister institution.
Some said the apparent European rush to fill the power gap left by Rato's June 28 departure
announcement in an exercise of the handshake agreement could undermine the IMF search for
credibility.
Criticized for its methods and effectiveness, rivaled by new private or regional financing bodies,
scorned by some countries in Latin America and Asia, as well as by some anti-globalization
organizations, the IMF no longer is the paragon of financial power it was even 30 years ago.
"The IMF was a major player in global finance and its role was clear. Now it is much less clear,"
Danny Bradlow, the head of the international law program at American University in Washington,
told AFP.
"If the process goes forward as it looks like it might with (Strauss-Kahn) being sort of imposed by
the Europeans on the IMF, the willingness of other nations to participate actively in the IMF might
be reduced," he said.
Dennis De Tray, vice president of the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank,
called the quick nomination of Strauss-Kahn "a missed opportunity."
Britain did not entirely join the EU rally around Strauss-Kahn. Alistair Darling, the new finance
minister, backed Strauss-Kahn as "a very credible candidate."
But the British government "wants to see what other candidates there may be put forward from
other parts of the IMF," he said.
Developing countries for years have protested in vain against the tradition of Europeans running
the IMF and Americans leading the World Bank and have called for open, merit-based
competition for both posts.
The IMF executive board has not announced when it will vote on the next managing director, but
late Monday said it would move "expeditiously" to fill the post "in an open and transparent
manner."
The board also said that under IMF rules any member of the board could offer a nomination for
IMF managing director, "regardless of nationality."
Unlike the United States, which was the only country recently to propose a candidate for the
World Bank presidency, Robert Zoellick, the 27-nation EU could have taken the opportunity of
Rato's resignation to launch an open and merit-based nomination process.
"The key issue that faces the Europeans is whether or not as a group they're going to step up to
an issue that the United States decided not to address," De Tray told AFP.
"They could take a very sensible step forward by having an open and transparent process even if
the outcome was kept among the Europeans. That would bode well for the future."
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