[stop-imf] Response to Wolfowitz nomination to head World Bank

[robert weissman]

STATEMENT OF ROBERT WEISSMAN, DIRECTOR, ESSENTIAL ACTION, IN RESPONSE TO
NOMINATION OF PAUL WOLFOWITZ TO HEAD WORLD BANK

For Immediate Release:
March 16, 2005

For More Information:
Robert Weissman 202-387-8030; 202-360-1844 (cell)

Unless the Bush administration's intention is to speed up efforts to
shut down and replace the World Bank altogether, it is hard to imagine a
worse selection for World Bank chief than Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz brings no apparent development experience to the job, but does
offer a record of unabashed militarism and unilateralism that represents
exactly the wrong direction for the World Bank.

Militarism and wasteful spending on weaponry is a huge problem in the
developing world. The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, who is emblematic of
misplaced priorities in the United States -- sends exactly the wrong
message to poor developing countries that should spend far less money on
military operations and instead invest to advance genuine national
security interests, such as healthcare, education and providing for
basic survival.

For decades, the World Bank has veered out of control, pushing
mega-development projects that have displaced millions of people, failed
to improve national well-being and thrown countries into a downward debt
spiral. The Bank has simultaneously pushed market fundamentalist
policies -- including blind support for privatization, deregulation, and
marketization and commodification of social services and public goods --
that have impoverished hundreds of millions.

Periodically, the Bank acknowledges its past failures and promises to
start anew -- only to repeat the mistakes of the previous era, yet again.

If the Bank is going to continue to exist, it does need a new start, but
not the kind that Paul Wolfowitz's nomination portends.

What the Bank does need to do is listen to the demands that have come
from social movements in developing countries and been echoed by allied
groups in the rich countries: cancel the debts owed by the poorest
nations, without harmful economic conditions; end support for the market
fundamentalist policies known as structural adjustment, which include
such policies as water privatization, removing labor protestions and
user fees for healthcare; end it support for environmentally harmful
projects, such as those in oil, mining, gas development and those
involving large dams; and open up its operations and become more
transparent.

The only good news about this nomination is that it is likely to provoke
fierce opposition, and a genuine debate about whether there should be a
World Bank, and if so, what its function should be.

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Essential Action is a Washington, D.C.-based public interest
organization that works on international development-related issues.