Protesters rally outside the World Bank to hold a "farewell party" for bank President Paul Wolfowitz, May 9, in Washington, DC.

The resignation of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz has emboldened critics of the institution’s governance structure, who are clamoring for an overhaul of not only the bank but its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Wolfowitz, who has been fending off accusations of favoritism and nepotism at the Washington-based institution, will resign effective June 30, the first president of the institution ever to be forced out.
“The executive directors acknowledge Wolfowitz’ decision to resign as president of the World Bank Group, effective end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2007),“ the 24 bank directors, who ran the institution’s day-to-day affairs with Wolfowitz during his two-year tenure, said in a statement.
The directors appear to have given Wolfowitz the graceful exit he has been fighting for and accepted, though not so warmly, his request that he resign in return for their acknowledgement that he was not the only person at fault in the controversy.
In their statement, the directors said that the episode, which started seven weeks ago with leaks revealing that Wolfowitz had engineered a generous promotion and salary increase for his girlfriend, fellow bank employee Shaha Riza, that did not conform to bank regulations, showed that the bank’s governance system needed urgent repair.
Despite his initial public apology, Wolfowitz has lately maintained that the bank’s ethics committee also erred by not being clear in its directions and guidelines.
In his own statement, Wolfowitz, 63, who came to the bank from the Pentagon in June 2005, said he was pleased the directors had consented that he “acted ethically and in good faith“. He also sided with the directors in calling for reform of the bank’s governance system.
“Hopefully the difficulties of the last few weeks can actually strengthen the bank by identifying some of the areas of governance and human-resource management where reform is needed,“ Wolfowitz said in a lengthy statement, in which he reviewed his work during his two-year tenure.
The following days and weeks saw Wolfowitz, once the high-riding No 2 man at the Defense Department and a leading architect of the ill-fated Iraq war, trying to cover up the controversy before eventually making a humiliating public admission that he had made a “mistake“.
Calls from the bank’s staff, senior management and officials from across the world poured down on the bank for Wolfowitz to quit. The nepotism charges added fuel to an internal simmering revolt over the conduct of his close aides and the more-than-generous pay they were getting.
The World Bank, which critics have long accused of getting away with harmful policies and practices in developing nations away from the gaze of the media, now received unprecedented media attention because of the evolving controversy.
The resignation announcement quickly rekindled calls for fixing the “real problem“ at the World Bank--namely its governance structure.
Since the World Bank was established in the 1940s, the US government has designated its president without consulting other member nations, while European governments designated the managing director of the IMF.
The international development group Oxfam, which had quickly joined in the call for Wolfowitz’ ouster, said the next move falls on the shoulders of the rich nations that control the World Bank--the United States and European nations.
“The US and other rich countries must now show that they are serious about good governance by allowing the next head of the bank to be appointed based on merit through an open, accountable process,“ said Bernice Romero, advocacy director of Oxfam International.
ATIMES.COM

The six-monthly summit between the European Union and Russia is likely to be a tetchy affair. In spite of valiant efforts by Germany, in the EU chair, to launch negotiations on a new partnership pact, fresh sources of friction have emerged to block progress. Russia blames the new member states of the EU for making mischief. Yet the reality is that Moscow’s high-handed attitude towards its former dependencies is largely to blame. It is up to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to deliver that message bluntly to President Vladimir Putin.
Of course it is in the vital interests of both sides to have a harmonious relationship.
But civilised behaviour cannot be sacrificed for the sake of good business. The two should go hand in hand. Russia has long been pursuing tactics of divide-and-rule with the EU, offering bilateral deals to big member states, in order to isolate the more critical small countries, including many from the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The EU will be sorely weakened if it does not maintain a common front now.
The immediate problems blocking progress include a Russian ban on meat imports from Poland; an effective trade blockade on Estonia in response to that country’s decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial; and a 10-month-long stoppage of Russian oil supplies to a refinery in Lithuania that has been sold to a Polish rather than a Russian buyer.
All should be quite possible to resolve if the reasons for the blockages were not so obviously political.
The European Commission has sought to reassure Russia’s veterinary services that meat coming from Poland is safe.
To no avail. Estonia may have been precipitate in moving the war memorial but that does not justify a trade blockade. And the Lithuanian oil embargo has persisted far longer than genuine repair works on a pipeline would justify.
It is understandable that Russia finds relations with its former vassal states difficult. They are hyper-sensitive to any hint of bullying, while Moscow accuses them of stirring up anti-Russian attitudes in western Europe. The trouble is that Mr Putin gives them cause to do so.
Russia’s thinking seems to be that the EU has few bargaining chips. Many member states, led by Germany, rely on Russian energy. They want to do business with an oil-rich Russia. And they want to avoid giving Russia any extra excuse to veto the United Nations plan for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.
But the reality is that Russia needs the EU as a market as much as the EU needs Russia. That is the message Mr Putin needs to hear.
FT.COM

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, President of Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), has done what was feared by those who would have President General Musharraf president for another five years. He has filed a constitutional petition at the Supreme Court challenging the tenure of General Musharraf as army chief.
The honourable Supreme Court is already going through the tortuous routine of setting up a full bench to hear the reference pertaining to its chief, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who is a potential victim of General Musharraf’s bid to remain all powerful. Now, in another example of political matters finally ending up with the judiciary, the judges are going to be on tenterhooks.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad has filed the petition under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, maintaining that General Musharraf attained the age of superannuation in August 2003 and should not have continued his army job thereafter.
He holds that the president has been violating the law and service rules by addressing public rallies and has sought the court to issue an order against General Musharraf’s tenure as the army chief. Needless to say, the entire gamut of “legal objections“ being aired in the national press by jurists and experts will come up for scrutiny. The argument will start from the fact that in 1999 the Supreme Court granted General Musharraf indemnity till he held elections in 2002.
Thereafter the elected parliament passed the 17th Amendment giving him further exemptions.
One key issue relates to the oath laid down in the constitution for military personnel, which disallows them to take part in politics. The Supreme Court justified the assumption of power by General Musharraf in the judgment delivered in May 2000.
Does this mean that this oath has become ineffective for General Musharraf for all times to come? If he continues as the army chief, can he be a presidential candidate? If he retires now, will the two-year restriction on a military person’s taking part in politics apply to him?
This is another bunch of questions that has been occupying the minds of the people in Pakistan.
We know that the MMA provided him the grounds to carry on after 2004, the year he had publicly chosen as his last year in double harness.
After that, the opposition has abstained from going to the Supreme Court out of a sense of pique, but there is enough legal pretexts here to elicit the court’s opinion.
Despite the law passed by the current parliament to allow General Musharraf to continue in his position for a specified period, some constitutional provisions provide ample opportunity to raise the presidential election issue.
The Supreme Court will now have to deliver its opinion on the dual status of President General Musharraf. There is hardly any doubt that it will answer as obiter dicta other intricate points that non-experts have been bandying for the last two years. The 1973 Constitution intends that the presidential election process by the electoral college commence after expiration of the term specified in Article 41 (7) (b), which is the term for which President Musharraf has been elected under Article 41 of the Constitution.
The ruling party says the presidential tenure will lapse before the expiry of the tenure of parliament, giving it a week in which to re-elect him.
But if the president were to avoid a controversial course to stay in power, he can get re-elected from the new assemblies, provided he engages the major opposition parties for evolving a mutually acceptable arrangement.
However, he will have to review his political alignment and be prepared to quit as army chief and accept a lower-profile presidency. The political pressure on the judiciary is going to increase in the months to come. If the political situation deteriorates and there is growing anarchy and division in the country, either or both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif could risk returning to the country and putting their faith in a judiciary that may be tiring of remaining under the heel for so long. That is when the bell will start tolling for General Musharraf.
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

Congressional, gubernatorial and local elections in the Philippines are being billed by some pundits as a referendum on the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Unfortunately they have been more than that. They have been to a significant extent an indictment of the whole Filipino political establishment, with its rival family dynasties, which has failed to deliver on the hopes of social and economic reform that followed the 1986 ouster of the deeply corrupt Marcos regime.
Twenty years on, the popular frustration is showing. Corazon Aquino, the wife of Marcos’ murdered political challenger, came to power on a tidal wave of belief that life would at last change for the better.
It did not. Aquino was both a member of, and a prisoner of, the political and economic elite who had prospered under Marcos’ 21-year rule. Her successor in 1992, Fidel Ramos, was an equal disappointment.
Six years later, voters sought to break the mould by choosing the former movie star Joseph Estrada as their president. Unfortunately Estrada had all of the corrupt vices of the political establishment without their polish and decorum.
His three-year rule disgraced his office. He was forced from power to be succeeded by his Vice President Gloria Arroyo. Now she too has dashed the confidence of many of her supporters.
There are strong grounds for believing that Arroyo’s people fixed the 2004 presidential election. As a result, Filipino politics has been dominated for the last three years by opposition attempts to impeach the president for fraud. Though it seems opposition candidates may have won at least nine of the 12 Senate seats being contested, the president’s supporters are expected to maintain control of the House of Representatives.
That means opposition calls for her impeachment will continue to be blocked.
Past Filipino elections have often been marred by violence. The previous election was no exception.
One foreign observer compared the intimidation, bribery and ballot box manipulation he had seen as “worse than in Afghanistan“. Such a judgment ought to shock the political establishment. Apart from the long insurrection in Mindanao, the Philippines is a country relatively at peace. It ought to be able to conduct elections without the violence and brutality of a state like Afghanistan which had just emerged from years of traumatic civil war.
Unfortunately on past form, the political establishment, whose dynastic links reach right down through legislators and governors to mayors and village councilors, is unlikely to react to what many will see as a steady breakdown in confidence in the political process. The establishment’s hegemony has been challenged before and they have survived, whether in power or opposition. But this cannot go on forever.
Voters cannot be treated merely as ballot box fodder. There needs to be substantive improvements to the lives of everyone, regardless of their political allegiance. Corrupt, partisan and inefficient leadership threatens the future of Filipino democracy.
ARABNEWS.COM

Well, the numbers are in. One year ago, there were 98.3 million American racial “minorities.“ Today, that number is 100.7 million, which means that one in three American residents is non-white. “To put this in perspective,“ said Census chief Louis Kincannon, “there are more minorities in this country today than there were people in the United in 1910.“
Back then, in 1910, a Democrat would look more like David Duke than Ted Kennedy. What’s most astonishing today is that the very organizations that once forced America to stare down racial discrimination have cocooned themselves in silence--no longer seeing things as they are and taking action accordingly.
They are resting in place.
The “they“ are the National Urban League, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They do not see the overwhelming illegal immigration problem as a threat to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of American citizens. They hear, see and speak not at all.
One of their brethren, T. Willard Fair, is trying to enlighten them. He’s trying to get them to see that if illegal immigration continues unabated the inability of the black man and the status of the families he’s unable to tend to are only going to grow worse--a black America that Whitney Young wrote about in his 1969 book “Beyond Racism“ and mirrors the one Sen. Barack Obama discusses today.
Mr. Fair is president of the Greater Miami Urban League, and he told a House immigration panel last week that there are many reasons for the “grim“ pathological statistics that define today’s black men.
For black America, the immigration debate is not about race. It’s about class and values.
Mr. Kennedy spoke passionately about the millions and millions of illegal aliens who live in fear of being deported and being unable to provide for their families. But what about the millions of American men who live in fear of being unable to take care of their families?
Their once highly skilled construction or manufacturing jobs are being given to unskilled workers.
Their wage work at restaurants and hotels-- even for domestic workers--is being given to unskilled workers.
As a May 15 article by Brian DeBose in The Washington Times pointed out, one of the men on the same side of the debate as Mr. Fair is a white Republican--yes, a white Republican--and that man is Rep. Lamar Smith. In a letter to some of the same organizations that I cited earlier, Mr. Smith issued a challenge, saying that blacks were largely filling jobs that illegals had lost due to immigration raids. Mr. Smith then asked, in his letter, for those organizations to join him in “speaking out against the Senate’s proposed mass amnesty for illegal immigrants.“
Did they?
The NAACP made up a bunch of excuses. The SCLC, which was cofounded by MLK, didn’t even bother to return Brian’s calls. How can this be? This is from an organization that has a moral obligation as a Christian organization and a societal obligation, since its actions forced Bull Connor to turn off his hoses. It’s also disappointing that the Anti-Defamation League and the National Urban League are effectively letting Mr. Kennedy speak for their organizations. Whatever happened to Jews and blacks locking arms and marching toward the same goals?
The silence on the societal ramifications of illegal immigration has been so deafening for so long it has now given rise to the birth of a new nation. It is a nation that’s still not colorblind, as MLK had hoped. It is a place where a King holds less sway with black America than a Kennedy does. Small wonder the princely looking Obama even draws their attention.
Deborah Simmons
WASHTIMES.COM