Editorial
Paul Wolfowitz caves in, finally
The World Bank must now get back to business
Paul Wolfowitz would have done himself and the World Bank much good if he had resigned on his own rather than as a result of pressure. As it is, in his attempt to hang on to his job as president of the institution, he not only demonstrated his own churlishness but also made the bank hostage to his personal indiscretions. Any individual occupying such an important position as chief of the World Bank is expected to understand when he must sacrifice his self-interest once it clashes with the larger goals of the organisation itself. Mr. Wolfowitz, after he was outed on the generous pay package he had arranged for his partner Shaha Riza when she was seconded from the World Bank to the US State Department, clearly did not let such considerations stand in his way.Now that Wolfowitz has agreed to give up his job at the end of June, the World Bank must begin to clean up the mess his conduct has created in these past many weeks. President Bush, we understand, plans to put forward a quick replacement for the man whose ideas he has always shared and whom he is reluctantly having to see leave. We hardly need to mention here, as so many others are doing around the world, that Mr. Wolfowitz's successor must have credentials higher and better than being on friendly terms with or sharing ideology with the neocons in Washington. Of course, Wolfowitz's reputation as a neocon had little to do with his recent conduct. Even so, one cannot ignore the fact that he was a bad choice to head the World Bank. As a leading exponent of the Iraq war, the now disgraced chief of the World Bank took the lead in propagating the lie about Saddam Hussein's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction. His prediction that cheerful Iraqis would welcome American soldiers as liberators in Baghdad turned out to be a joke. The joke then became a near tragedy when Wolfowitz himself escaped death in an explosion in Baghdad. It was a shaken deputy defence secretary (which Wolfowitz then was) who was quickly flown out of Iraq's chaotic capital. The World Bank needs to begin working on a fresh new slate. Mr. Wolfowitz's successor ought to be appointed on the basis of personal integrity and a good grasp of international economics, neither of which was a qualification in the departing president. If that is ensured, the bank can redirect attention to its global mission of addressing poverty, a job that has been in suspension these few weeks.
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