The surprise resignation of the head of the International Monetary Fund immediately prompted calls for the job search for his replacement to reach beyond Europe - which has provided all the IMF's leaders. The top IMF job has always gone to Europeans since the IMF's inception in 1945.
Similarly, the World Bank is typically headed by an American, shutting out Japan and developing countries. Rodrigo Rato's resignation comes just weeks after the same debate raged over the selection of the next president of the IMF's sister organisation, the World Bank, following the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz over his promotion of a companion.
Both organisations, whose biggest contributors are the United States and Europe, are under pressure to give more say to emerging countries in how they are run. The IMF has started a reform process it hopes will do that, so opening up the selection of Rato's replacement to non Europeans will be critical, an IMF board official from a developing country said.
"It will be important for the credibility of that reform process that the selection process is opened up to candidates other than a European," the official told Reuters.
The ouster of Wolfowitz challenged the US leadership of the poverty-fighting World Bank. But the board of member countries last week still chose to keep an American in the job, approving US former secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, who starts on July 1.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.