Emerging giants denounce Europe lock IMF leadership for France's Lagarde

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Emerging giants denounce Europe lock on top job of world’s key lender

PARIS / BEIJING - France's Christine Lagarde announced her candidacy for the presidency of the International Monetary Fund, amid calls from the five major emerging economies for an end to the tradition that a European chairs the IMF.

France's Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announces her candidacy to head the IMF during a press conference in Paris, May 25, 2011.[Photo/Agencies]

The French finance minister announced her intentions on Wednesday, the eve of a G8 summit, after securing the backing of the 27-nation European Union and support from the United States, diplomats said.

"It is an immense challenge which I approach with humility and in the hope of achieving the broadest possible consensus," Lagarde told a news briefing

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French citizen, resigned last week after being charged with attempted rape.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa on Tuesday criticized EU officials for suggesting that the next IMF head should be a European, a convention that dates back to the founding of the global lender at the end of World War II.

However, the countries, known as the BRICS, failed to unite behind a common alternative candidate.

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In the first joint statement issued by their directors at the IMF in Washington, the BRICS said that the choice of who heads the IMF should be based on competence, not nationality. They called for "abandoning the obsolete, unwritten convention that requires that the head of the IMF be from Europe".

The statement was made one day after nominations for the job opened.

"The recent financial crisis which erupted in developed countries underscored the urgency of reforming international financial institutions so as to reflect the growing role of developing countries in the world economy," said the statement.

Chinese experts said the statement should be taken seriously.

"If developed countries don't respect the opinion of the BRICS, Lagarde is very likely to fail to win enough votes," said economist Guo Tianyong, director of the Research Center of the Chinese Banking Industry at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

BRICS account for about 11 percent of the voting rights, and Lagarde needs 85 percent of the votes to get the position.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a news conference in Addis Ababa on Wednesday at the close of the India-Africa trade summit that emerging countries should take a united stand on this issue.

"The reform of the global institutions, and that includes the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank), has been high on the agenda of developing countries for a long time," AFP quoted him as saying.

"But we have also to recognize that international relations beyond a point are power relations and that those who wield power do not wish to yield ground very easily," he said.

Public statements made recently by high-ranking European officials contradict public announcements made in 2007, at the time of the selection of Strauss-Kahn.

Jean-Claude Junker, president of the Eurogroup (finance ministers of the eurozone), then declared that "the next managing director will certainly not be a European" and that "in the Eurogroup and among EU finance ministers, everyone is aware that Strauss-Kahn will probably be the last European to become director of the IMF in the foreseeable future".
He Weiwen, an expert at a research institute affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce, said whether the convention will end depends on the US, which holds 17.75 percent of IMF shares and 16.8 percent of the voting rights.

"It's still very difficult for emerging economies to challenge the tradition" because the US is very likely to favor a European candidate as it will get reciprocal support from Europe for an American to run the World Bank, he

Officials from the BRICS emphasized that the new managing director should be selected after broad consultations with the membership, and said that adequate representation of emerging markets and developing members in the IMF management is critical for its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Developing countries have spent years attempting to reform the key global economic institution, as emerging economies became the major drivers of world economic development.

China last week said that the new IMF leader should be chosen on "merit, transparency and fairness".

Li Daokui, an adviser to the Chinese central bank's monetary policy committee, said earlier that the chances of a European taking the position are slim, but supporting a Chinese candidate is not the best choice for the country.

"I think a talent from a neutral and small country would accord more with the interests of the world, including China, because big countries such as India and Brazil have too many national interests," he said.

Agencies-China Daily
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Jetting into the Malay psyche!

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COMMENT By BARADAN KUPPUSAMY

The DAP, which has seen little success in drawing Malays into its party, is banking on the newly-launched Roketkini.com, a news portal in Bahasa Malaysia, to change the mind of the community.

THE DAP has always claimed to be a multi-racial party but has always struggled to win over Malays in any large numbers to its Malaysian Malaysia banner.

In the 1980s, it had a prominent Malay in the late Ahmad Nor, the Cuepacs president who was a firm believer in the party's struggles.

In recent times, the DAP has recruited the prominent Tunku Abdul Aziz, a co-founder of the Malaysian chapter of Transparency International, as its vice-chairman.

The party had hoped that more Malays would follow him.

His recruitment five months after the March 8, 2008 general election was hailed as the way to go for the multi-racial but Chinese-dominated DAP as it seeks to replace the MCA and Gerakan as the main contender for the support of the Chinese.

In peninsular Malaysia, the Tamil support for the DAP has also grown in the wake of the 2008 polls with the rise of Dr P. Ramasamy as the titular head of the Indian wing.



His elevation as Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, a first for Indians, was greeted with awe by the community that thus far had to be content with MIC president Datuk S. Samy Vellu as the sole minister in the Barisan Nasional government.

In Perak after 2008, another Indian was elevated to state assembly Speaker but Tronoh assemblyman V. Sivakumar's tenure of service was cut short by the defections of three state assemblymen two from PKR and one from DAP in February 2009 and the fall of the Pakatan Rakyat government. (That Speaker post was taken over by another Indian from Barisan, also for the first time in history).

However, after trying for about three years, Tunku Abdul Aziz announced last week that he had failed to recruit Malays to the DAP and that his presence in the party had not helped to win over the Malay grassroots in any appreciable number.

It was an honest admission that the party had failed to recruit Malays despite trying very hard.

The primary reason is that the DAP is seen by the Malays as a Chinese party, fighting for Chinese rights in a country dominated by Malays and is therefore to be avoided.

While Malays do want to interact with the DAP, they would rather do so as distinct members of the PKR or PAS and not as individuals or as members of the DAP.

Post-2008, the DAP's experience with Malays has changed dramatically with many opportunities opening up to understand Malay problems closely.

No longer is the DAP shunned or avoided by the Malays as a Chinese party.

In the Tenang by-election, the over- zealous DAP turned PAS candidate Normala Sudirman into a “Chinese empress” all decked out in traditional Chinese clothes so the Chinese voters there could accept her.

Umno must make up its mind on DAP's 'racism'

But the rapport with the Malays from these encounters is just not enough for the party which has grand visions of leading the democratic movement in the country.

The recent Sarawak elections showed that the DAP is a clear winner among the Pakatan Rakyat parties.

It also pointed to DAP being able to win over the urban masses of all races, not just in Sarawak but also in the peninsula and most likely in Sabah as well.

The Sarawak victory, however, showed its weaknesses as well it is an urban force and its failure to have a say over the vast rural reaches, which it surrendered to PKR, has come back to haunt it.

That is why party adviser Lim Kit Siang proposed a merger with SNAP to get at SNAP's rural connections although the party lost nearly all of its deposits in the Sarawak polls.

Still, the question remains: Why won't the Malays join the DAP? Is not the DAP also fighting for the same things that the Malays want?”

These questions have forced the DAP into a brand new strategy to win over the community.

By forming Roketkini.com, helmed by editor Wan Hamidi Hamid, it hopes to reach out to the Malay grassroots. Its aim is to reach out to them by providing views that are distinct from PKR or PAS.

How well it does and how many Malays it can wean from Umno are all questions that only time will tell.


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For sure public advocacy is here to stay, jetting the Malay psyche!

China’s Super Rich Get All the Headlines

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 Ray Kwong

I think we can all agree that China has a lot of newly minted millionaires and billionaires, and that along with the only slightly less privileged they’ve made a significant impact on the global luxury market.
Without a doubt, they make great copy—expressing their collective capitalist thoughts by buying up expensive cars, yachts, private jets and even helicopters.

 

                All photos by M. Scott Brauer

But what about the common people on the street? What’s the average Zhou Blow thinking and what does he have to say?

Enter We Chinese, a photo project that doesn’t profess to be much more than that, but still provides a fascinating quick read on what Chinese people think about China and the part they see themselves playing in their homeland’s future. A few random excerpts:

• “I am a builder of China’s future, just like a component of an airplane, and with me China will soar even farther in the future,” said Cen Qi, 24, a student. “China includes Taiwan, where Chinese people reside, and it is the abbreviation of the People’s Republic of China.”
• “China is just the name of a country,” said Bo Wei Jun, 36, an engineer. “Occasionally the people bring up suggestions, but nobody listens.”
• [China means] “hope, power and culture,” said Ya Ming, 47, a reporter. [My role] is “to make a bigger contribution to world peace.”
• “A ‘voiceless’ person has no way of offering society even the smallest contribution,” said Rui Ling Yan, 21, a student. “China is my ancestral country mother. It’s what I hold most dear.”

Scott Brauer, a photojournalist and former China resident, started the We Chinese project as a way to respond to friends’, family’s, and strangers’ questions about the global direction of China and their stereotypes of the people.

“The project aims to give faces and voices to a small section of the Chinese people caught in the center of historic shifts in the country’s socioeconomic circumstances,” said Brauer.

While you can’t draw any conclusions about the entire population—the final project has just 100 portraits and short interviews—the sentiments are revealing. Brauer says: “the responses range from prosaic to poetic, from rote to inspired, and from unemotional to patriotic. The people photographed expressed a sincere love of country and optimism about the country’s future development and peaceful position in the world.”

We Chinese is definitely worth a look-see.

For a more in-depth look at China, as told by leading participants in or observers of China’s transformation over the past three decades, go to Asia Society’s China Boom website which I wrote about previously here.

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