[stop-imf] Sign-on for Wolfowitz taking office

[robert weissman]

**sign-ons to: <wolfowitzday@yahoo.com>**

May 20, 2005
From: list@50years.org

On June 1, Paul Wolfowitz, the man best-known for planning the invasion
and occupation of Iraq and promoting them as U.S. policy, will
officially become president of the World Bank.

Civil society organizations from around the world have been meeting over
the last few weeks to plan actions in response to this absurd and
unpleasant occasion. In Washington, activists will be gathering outside
World Bank headquarters (18th and Pennsylvania) at 9:30 am on June 1
(some will be there earlier to distribute information to Bank staff
about their new boss). Actions are also planned for Manila and other
cities. If you are interested in staging an action, please contact Hope
Chu (hope@50years.org) to let us know and to get suggestions.

A letter to Wolfowitz has been drafted by these groups, and is now being
circulated for sign-ons. It appears below. The deadline is Monday, May
30 at 6 pm (Eastern time, North America). We are primarily seeking
*organizational* endorsements. Please include the full name of your
organization and its location -- city, state (if applicable), and
country. Sign-ons should be sent to <wolfowitzday@yahoo.com>.

Thank you

50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice


**sign-ons to: <wolfowitzday@yahoo.com>**
June 1, 2005

Dear Mr. Wolfowitz:

As you know, civil society organizations around the world reacted to
your nomination and confirmation as president of the World Bank Group
with alarm.  Now, on the occasion of your formal accession to the
office, we write you to make clear what we perceive as the major
challenges facing the World Bank and the governments that control it.
We are writing in the hope that you will address these issues in a
satisfactory way.

The process itself that led to your appointment itself demonstrates the
first challenge: of democracy and accountability.  The 60-year-old
unwritten agreement allowing only the president of the United States to
choose the head of the World Bank Group is archaic and out of step with
standard norms of democratic practice.  The World Bank may be
multilateral in name, but in practice it has become a tool for imposing
a development and economic model that serves the interests of a few
governments and corporations while rendering borrowing countries, the
majority of its members, all but powerless to shift the Bank, or
themselves, away from that model, or even to explore alternatives.

We anticipate that in the next five years the World Bank will set up a
committee to examine its voting structure and presidential selection
process, and that it may even make reasonable-sounding suggestions.
But, given past experiences with such processes at the World Bank, we
expect little real change.  The secretive and undemocratic day-to-day
decision-making processes at the international financial institutions
weaken the credibility of the IMF and World Bank even as they profess
transparency and accountability, and demand those qualities of borrowing
countries.

We anticipate that early in your presidency you will announce your
intention to engage in consultation and dialogue with civil society.
But given the record of the World Bank over the last 10 years, it is
likely that millions of dollars in public funds will be spent on
processes, reports, and recommendations that will ultimately be ignored
by the World Bank, as was the case with, among others, the World
Commission on Dams, the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review
Initiative (SAPRI), and the Extractive Industries Review (EIR).  The
Bank largely disavowed the results of these processes which made
explicit recommendations to improve bank procedures, and to make it more
transparent and democratic. The Bank=92s recent controversial Joint
Facilitation Committee neither improved relations with civil society nor
made the Bank more responsive to its demands. Instead, it ignored the
=93voice of the peoples=94 affected by Bank policies and practices.

We anticipate that the World Bank will continue to devote millions of
dollars to its public relations efforts.  These efforts have deftly
distanced the bank from its most unpopular policies and programs while
maintaining the status quo. Over the past decade, the Bank has
manipulated the meaning of terms like  "poverty reduction," its new name
for structural adjustment programs; "good governance," its new rationale
for imposing  conditions on borrowing governments; and "debt relief",
its deceitful euphemism for insuring that governments continue to
maintain their place on the borrow-repay-reschedule debt treadmill.

The World Bank=92s public relations staff now faces the challenge of
convincing people that the new president is independent of the Bush
Administration and its controversial policies. We fear that "democracy"
will be among the new buzz-words at the Bank, and the basis for a new
set of conditionalities, particularly in the Middle East. We fear it
will be used not to help create space for people to choose their own
economic systems and development models, but as a cover to impose rules
prioritizing foreign investment and market liberalization above all
else, and to disempower and discredit governments that choose to
prioritize the priorities of their citizens over corporate interests.

Nowhere will the public relations staff be more challenged than in
dealing with the World Bank's role in Iraq. We anticipate a renewed
politicization of the Bank, in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, in
order to increase corporate access to oil and other resources and assets
as well as markets and cheap labor.  You will be asked to recuse
yourself from the World Bank/UN investigation into the U.S. government's
distribution of Iraqi development funds to Halliburton, a contract with
which you were personally involved; we hope you will do so. Ethical
questions on that issue could well be compounded by the World Bank=92s
determination that Iraq's food subsidies should be eliminated -- in a
country where acute malnutrition rates for children have nearly doubled
since the invasion of April 2003.  You could confound your critics by
immediately announcing that the Bank will withdraw its conclusions about
Iraqi subsidies.

We anticipate that you will talk about the need for more debt relief in
the poorest countries, and perhaps even publicly advocate that President
Bush co-operate with other wealthy countries to offer more relief.  We
believe that such calls would be greatly strengthened if you were to
employ the logic you used in advocating for France, Russia, and Germany
to cancel the debts they claim of Iraq -- namely that loans contracted
by undemocratic regimes which worked to the detriment of the population
should be annulled.  Many of our organizations have used the same logic
with regard to the equally odious debts contracted by the apartheid
regime in South Africa, Mobutu in Zaire, Marcos in the Philippines, the
military junta in Argentina, and many more.  We have never received a
sympathetic hearing from the World Bank.

You have announced that you will travel to Africa shortly after taking
office.  We anticipate that while there you will meet with presidents
and prime ministers, and declare the urgency of helping the continent.
We fear that access to Africa's oil will take precedence over poverty
eradication and sustainable development and that, once again, there will
be no material improvement in Africa's outlook resulting from World Bank
programs during your tenure. Despite an endless series of Bank
anti-poverty initiatives in the region during the last 30 years, African
per capita incomes are below their 1975 level. Only by demonstrating
respect for the people of Africa, their knowledge and their own
particular national priorities will you gain credibility on that continent.

We note that at this historical moment, Latin American countries are
disavowing and resisting the imposition of the so-called Washington
Consensus, and many Asian nations are increasing their financial
independence so as to free themselves from the dictates of the IMF and
the Bank.

Whatever stand you ultimately take on these issues, we commit ourselves
to monitoring the performance of the World Bank, examining its rhetoric
and exposing its deceptions and manipulations.  We will invite others to
do the same -- governments; NGOs; and the media which have too often
paid more attention to words than actions and evidence. The stakes for
the Bank are high: its reputation is at an all-time low and its policies
continue to be a major source of poverty, violence and injustice. It is
in your hands to start the process of reversing this persistent trend.
The world is watching.


Signed:

**sign-ons to: <wolfowitzday@yahoo.com>**