Wolfowitz a "disastrous" leader, says the man who ousted him

I also find it suspicious when two Dutch financiers agree. The simplest explanation? A vast anti-american conspiracy on the part of the Netherlands.

wtf???

I was making a joke. Not entirely successfully, it appears.

I admit my opinion of the matter is somewhat skewed as my only source of information is the Wall Street Journal. However, they have argued from the very beginning that Mr Wolfowitz did only what was asked of him by the ethics comittee, i.e. promote his girlfriend to prevent a conflict of interest he himself brought to the board. The reason for his forced resignation is argued to lie with "the mandarins at the Bank" who feared measures to make the Bank more efficient and accountable.
The problem now is, however, to determine the truth of the matter, as two diametrically opposed views are presented in the media. (I am Dutch by the way)

I find it very, very difficult to understand Mr. Wolfowitz's actions. The regulations and the administrative minutiae aside, it should be perfectly obvious to any sensible manager that arranging a promotion and a pay-rise for his partner is simply not a good idea. I mean, how hard to get is this, really!?

Even if Wolfowitz genuinely believed that the ethics committee had 'instructed' him to do so, he should at least have been aware that he was shooting himself in the foot. Perhaps it was all a conspiracy and a trap; but if so, then the behavior of the victim was still more worthy of Forrest Gump than of the president of the World Bank. He offered his head to his enemies, on a silver plate with a nice bow tied around it. Not a particularly smart thing to do for a highly unpopular leader.

As for 'fighting corruption', the principle is of course undisputable, but if I am informed correctly, the standard of propriety was in practice mainly defined by whether a country was friendly to foreign businessmen. With all respect for businessmen, even American businessmen, I have to say that this seems to be of more direct, tangible benefit to the readers of the Wall Street Journal than to the world's poor.

Paul....

Were you reading the news pages, or the editorials? Because I have a difficult time believing that WSJ failed to report on the conclusions of the ad hoc group that investigated the incident (see http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/secondreportoftheadhocgroup.pdf )

While its possible to argue that the chair of the Ethics committee was ambiguous about how the situation should be handled with Riza, the fact remains that Wolfowitz personally arranged a job for his girlfriend that was essentially a "make work" political patronage position (I mean, working for Mary Cheney?) under terms well outside the rules of the World Bank regarding compensation, then ordered the head of Human Resources to hire her under those terms.

Basically, he set his girlfriend up with a cushy patronage position in the Bush administration at the World Bank's expense for his personal convenience that was designed to advance the Bush agenda, rather than try to find a position where she could serve the interests of the World Bank in other institutions. And he did so with complete disregard for the established rules of the World Bank itself.

The ambiguity lay in the fact that the WB Ethics Committee informally notified that resolving the conflict of interest issue for Wolfowitz by finding his girlfriend an appropriate job was not within their purview -- that Wolfowitz had to deal with the situation itself. This was (as Wolfowitz would have you believe) not permission to do whatever he wanted -- and that is made clear in the report.

I read both, and indeed the results of the report were mentioned. However, it was portrayed (I believe in the editorials) that the bank acknowledged its ethics committee was vague but this was no reason for the excessive payrise. Put differently: Yes we were wrong, but you were even more wrong.

I agree with you all that Mr Wolfowitz was wrong in taking the actions he did, regardless of consent, and indeed, he should have known better. However, even before Mr Wolfowitz came to the Bank, the situation with his girlfriend was known (i.e. in 2005) while his actions had been reviewed by the ethics committee in 2006 where is was concluded that no further action was neccesary.

However, some more reading reveals that a far more likely reason for his ousting (and the preceding leak of confidential documents that got the ball rolling) is the fact that he hired some old friends in various positions who subsequently imposed their view on the Banks actions (As Emanual points out the preferential treatment of US business, but also a reduction in emphasis on family planning to reduce poverty or a more mellow view on climate change).

Thus, there may be some truth that people in the bank wanted him gone. However, the reason was, in my mind, the clash of ideas about what the bank should do and how.

Paul....
a couple of points:

1) whether the Bank knew about the relationship prior to Wolfowitz' appointment is questionable at best, but more importantly, a non-issue. Wolfowitz was expected to act ethically, regardless of when the Bank found out about the relationship -- and it was Wolfowitz' responsibility to ensure that conflicts could be resolved appropriately before he accepted the appointment.

2) The single most damning fact is that VP for Human Resources (Coll) notified Wolfowitz in writing that he was uncomfortable with the terms being demanded by Riza, but was ordered by Wolfowitz to implement those terms (with one minor change). But despite Colls protestations, Wolfowitz notified the Ethics Committee that He and Riza had "reached an agreement" and consistent with EC policy that committee did no further investigation at that time. The EC generated a report stating that the situation had been resolved satisfactorily.

3) The 2006 "review" was precipitated by an anonymous email that provided no NEW information that would have lead the EC to investigate the situation further. The EC simply referred back to its original report on the matter -- in other words, the review was perfunctory.

4) The report itself (and other information) strongly suggests that there were performance issues with Riza before the Wolfowitz. appointment. She joined the World Bank in a policy position ("Gender Specialist") in 1997, but in 2002 was given a PR position ("Senior Communications Official"). During the "negotiations" she said her demand for the massive salary increase was based on the fact that she'd previously been discriminated against by the bank in terms of raises and promotions because she was Arab and a woman. But it may well have been her politics--which were consistent with the Bush administration and thus inconsistent with the views of the rest of the world, including the world development community, that had "held her back."

5) The WSJ Editorial pages are about as reliable a source of facts and their correct interpretation as the World Socialist Workers Daily.

Thanks for the background information. I already concurred that what he did was wrong although now it looks even more so.

With respect to your remarks: The Daily Mail published a story about the couple in 2005 (i.e. before he came to the Bank) and I knew that objectivity is not an issue in editorials. However, as I said, it is hard to form a balanced opinion as no source of information is completely trustworthy (although the editorials are not the first place to look for objectivity).

Moving beyond that, however, I now wonder why this issue did not surface earlier, hence my suggestion of a clash of ideas.

I've got another little theory (I tried it out on a couple World Bank types and they neither shot it down nor enthusiastically endorsed it, so I didn't think it was worth mentioning in the column I wrote on the subject). It's that the Europeans were willing (grudgingly) to put up with Wolfowitz when he was seen as somebody who might wield his clout with the White House and on Capitol Hill on the bank's behalf. But after the Democrats took control of Congress last year they started looking upon Wolfie as a political liability.

Interesting line of thought. Maybe the reasoning was that now was the time to strike as political opposition would be minimal? So, rather than a primary reason, a potential hurdle was now absent?