Choosing Poverty's Banker

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

March 24, 2005

The World Bank has tremendous power and reach in determining living conditions for billions of people around the world—including the 1 billion who live on less than a dollar a day. But the process for choosing a leader for the institution is secretive and includes only Americans and elite Europeans. Here, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. calls for the "South"—the developing nations of the world—to take matters into their hands and nominate one of their own to lead the World Bank. Even if it's nothing more than a symbolic gesture this time, it's a start. 

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., is the founder & president of the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition , and a former candidate for president in 1984 and 1988.

The Bush administration in general, and Paul Wolfowitz in particular, would have you believe that 1,500 Americans have died, perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and more than $200 billion has been spent on invading and occupying Iraq, in the name of "democracy."

Funny, then, that Paul Wolfowitz is now being promoted in a secret, opaque, closely held process that freezes out most of the world. Of special note, the selection of the new World Bank head freezes out the 1 billion people who live on less than $1 per day, and the 3 billion who live on less than $2 per day. It freezes out the entire Southern hemisphere, Africa, Asia and South America. In fact, it freezes out everyone who is not a Bush loyalist in the United States, or a nervous European elite.

It is as if fighting world poverty were a ping-pong game between the United States and Europe, a game in which the poorer nations are not even allowed to enter.

But why? Why should the world’s poorest people be excluded from the process of selecting one of the most important leaders who will affect their lives? Why are the nations most controlled by World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies not allowed to nominate—or even participate in any meaningful way—in the selection of new leadership?

Is Nelson Mandela less qualified to run the World Bank than Paul Wolfowitz? Or how about one of the Brazilians behind the Lula government’s innovative proposal to eliminate hunger by taxing international arms sales? Or, since we know that the most direct route to fighting world poverty is to empower and educate poor women, why not a woman from the South to lead the World Bank; say, Arundhati Roy of India, or Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya—two women who actually know something about helping poor people?

These names are not even considered. Only Americans, and even then, only hard-core Bush loyalists, are in the loop. In an entirely secret process, despite his lack of development credentials, and despite the widespread rejection of the idea when the Wolfowitz name was first floated publicly, George W. Bush followed up on his divisive choice of John Bolton for the U.N. with the promotion of leading war hawk Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.

Forget all that talk about reconciliation with Europe and the rest of the world. Bush’s picks were like a thumb in each of the world’s wide-open eyes.

Since Bush makes up his own rules as he goes along, so should we. After all, when George W. Bush meets with Tony Blair, that’s a minority meeting. The United States and the United Kingdom together are only one-sixteenth of the world’s population.

It's time for a new set of international rules. The IMF is not just the property of Europe; and the World Bank can no longer be just a tool of U.S. foreign policy.

"One-dollar, one-vote" is no recipe for democracy.

The South deserves a voice, and a candidate. The South should nominate one of their own this week, even if just to break the stranglehold the United States and European elites have on the process—just to crack the ice a bit.

That nominee should have a program, a "4-D" platform:

• Democracy, to open up the World Bank/Monetary Fund systems to the whole world
• Development, to move from big energy projects to micro-, women-centered projects, with an emphasis on renewable technologies
• Disease-fighting, to battle AIDS and malaria, and the other diseases that ravage the Southern hemisphere
• Debt cancellation, to completely eliminate the debts of Africa and Latin America, to bring the "Jubilee" described in the Bible to the world’s poorest people.

Providing 100 percent debt cancellation with no conditions, no tricks, no limitations and no restrictions is the single most useful step we could take to fight world poverty.

We must challenge the process, right now, by acting as if the Southern nations matter. Nominate a Southerner. Practice democracy. Cancel the debt. Wipe the slate clean, and let's start over.

Three billion poor people are waiting.