American elected to World Bank top job
WASHINGTON - The World Bank Monday elected Korean-born American health expert Jim Yong Kim as its new president, maintaining the US grip on the job and leaving developing countries questioning the selection process.
The World Bank Executive Directors this time followed the new selection process agreed in 2011 which, for the first time in the Bank's history, yielded multiple nominees.
Besides Kim, 52, a physician and pioneer in treating HIV/Aids and tuberculosis in the developing world, two other candidates in the fray initially were Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Jose Antonio Ocampo, Colombia's former finance minister and a professor at New York's Colombia University.
Ocampo withdrew last week, while Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman candidate who had wide support of South Africa and the rest of Africa, failed to find adequate support among developed nations.
Unlike previous World Bank elections, the decision was not unanimous this time. Kim won with the support of the US allies in Western Europe, Japan, Canada and some emerging market economies, including Russia, Mexico and South Korea.
"The final nominees received support from different member countries, which reflected the high calibre of the candidates," the Bank said in announcing its board's decision.
Okonjo-Iweala, a veteran of the institution, blasted the way the US has monopolized the position since the Bank was launched.
"You know this thing is not really being decided on merit," she told reporters in Abuja."It is voting with political weight and shares and therefore the US will get it."
The first health specialist to be appointed a president of the World Bank, Kim is currently president of Dartmouth College. His selection marks a significant change from the American bankers and diplomats who have been tapped to lead the Bank in the past.
Kim will assume his new post on July 1 and hold the top job at the 187-nation development agency. for five years.
Speaking to media in Johannesburg on Monday, South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan expressed doubts about election process despite the new system enabling more than one candidate to contest for the post.
"From what I've heard there are serious concerns about the level of transparency," Gordhan told the Foreign Correspondents Association in Johannesburg.
Apart from the grumbling about the US-Europe axis, which has ensured that the World Bank top job went to the US and the IMF top job to Europe, critics are worried that Kim's experience is not broad enough to handle all of the fields the World Bank deals with - from infrastructure development to environmental protection.
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