SAMEER DOSSANI
NJOKI NJOROGE NJEHU
Director of the 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, Dossani said today: “The Wolfowitz scandal is a symptom of a much deeper problem.” Referring to the “gentleman’s agreement” which allows the U.S. government to appoint the head of the World Bank, while Europe appoints the head of the IMF, Dossani said: “The head of the World Bank Group, ostensibly the most important position in development financing, should not be the unilateral decision of the U.S. If the World Bank has any hope of recovering from this ordeal, it must at least make some attempt at developing transparent and democratic procedures for hiring its own president.” Dossani is one of the contributors to a new blog.

Executive director of Nairobi-based Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, Njehu said: “The impact of the World Bank’s policy impositions of the last 20 years still devastates us every day. … Paul Wolfowitz has done nothing to change that; he is no true friend of Africa. African politicians do African peoples no favors by making excuses for corruption and for the corrupt.” Njehu is available via the 50 Years Network.
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NADIA MARTINEZ
Martinez is research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She just wrote the piece “Adios, World Bank!” In it she states: “At the same time that Venezuela announced it would pull out of the World Bank and IMF, Ecuador expelled the Bank’s representative in that country, declaring him persona non grata. …

“Regardless of what happens to Wolfowitz or his girlfriend, the World Bank will continue in its downward spiraling crisis of legitimacy, at least in Latin America. As countries are able to mobilize the necessary resources to free themselves from financial obligations with the institution, they are likely to make this a priority. So too will they continue to collaborate in finding new ways to solve the region’s poverty and other plights without turning to the World Bank — but rather by devising innovative arrangements such as bartering (i.e.: oil for doctors, as in the case of Venezuela and Cuba), and by catalyzing existing resources through the Bank of the South and other regional institutions.”

Martinez was born and raised in Panama; she co-directs the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020