Paul Wolfowitz is trying to reassure World Bank staff that he has turned his back on the machine of war and has his eyes trained on global development, reports the World Bank press review Friday.
In an effort to burnish his good name with his skeptical new staff at the World Bank, the former No. 2 at the US Defense Department is handing out his e-mail address and inviting them to write to him.
Wolfowitz, 61, officially takes over as president of the World Bank on June 1 and has set up a transition office on the upper floors of the bank with two aides, as he eases himself into the new job.
He spent his first week meeting senior staff and has also spontaneously offered to address staff gatherings, expressing a deep respect for the institution and its mission as the globe’s biggest funder of development projects.
In one meeting of more than 200 staff, Wolfowitz read out his e-mail address and invited everyone there to write him about what works and what does not in the bank, still widely considered sluggish and bureaucratic.
While he admitted he might not be able to reply to all e-mails, the gesture seemed clearly intended to allay lingering fears among staff worried he will tarnish the banks image because of his central role in planning the Iraq war.
Staff have expressed misgivings, telling the bank staff association that Wolfowitzs ties to the Bush administration could affect their work in countries that disagree with the US foreign policy agenda. World Bank insiders said Wolfowitz took pains this week to show admiration for the institution, which gives billions of dollars in project money to the worlds poorest countries.
– He explained his background and said obviously the things we had heard about him made him sound like an awful person, said one staffer who attended a meeting. Trying to reassure staff that he did not plan sweeping changes, he told them: “Complete change takes a revolutionary and that is not what you have got here.”
Meanwhile, Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, said in order for Wolfowitz to become an effective leader of the Bank, he will need to quickly show his independence from the Bush administration and ditch his predecessors habit of trying to please everybody.
James Wolfensohn, whom Wolfowitz is scheduled to replace as World Bank president, “really could not say no to anything” and “followed development fads from one to the next,” Rogoff said in a speech to the National Economists Club. That approach, he said, must change: – I think Wolfowitz needs to become sort of the Dr. No at the bank – somebody who (lends) with some priorities, he stated.
Rogoff offered plenty of advice for Wolfowitz – the list covered everything from appointing a committee of external evaluators to monitor bank research to converting the bank “from a lending agency to an aid agency.” But “above all, he needs to do something to demonstrate his independence from the Republican administration in the United States,” Rogoff said.
– Wolfowitz has to really take on the US administration on a big issue if he wants to be effective, he said adding: – That issue is likely to involve the Middle East.
– I think if I were him I would be very wary about sending staff into Iraq or be careful about what they do in the Middle East, to not be seen as an instrument of US policy, Rogoff said. Still, he said, Wolfowitz will have to tread carefully. – You want to stake your independence on something where you are obviously right, he said.
To repair his tattered public image, Wolfowitz might also want to deploy the vast public-relations staff his predecessor built at the bank, Rogoff said.
– I would certainly counsel Paul Wolfowitz to put himself in the hands of the professionals who run the World Banks external-relations department: he needs an extreme makeover, Rogoff said.
– If he listens to them and follows their guidance, he will be a star on his own in no time, he concluded.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
