World Bank outgoing president James Wolfensohn received an adulatory ovation this weekend as he orchestrated his last big gathering of the powerful lender, but campaigners struck a discordant note. Wolfensohn will be replaced on June 1 by US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a "neo-conservative" whose appointment has filled many in the anti-poverty community with dread.
This weekend saw the annual spring meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund. With a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers held in tandem, the great and the good of global finance were on hand to bid Wolfensohn farewell.
But the 71-year-old Australian-born American, an Olympic fencer and accomplished cellist, is not heading into a well-earned retirement. Instead he is taking up a no less daunting new role as the international community's envoy to oversee Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told a joint session of the IMF and World Bank that he looked forward to working with Wolfowitz.
"But I cannot let this occasion pass without a special word of thanks Jim, who over the last 10 years has made the World Bank a true campaigner against world poverty, and an ever closer partner of the United Nations," he said.
"I am so glad he has accepted a new mission to work on economic and social issues in the Middle East. We certainly need his leadership, flair and vision there."
US Treasury Secretary John Snow paid tribute to Wolfensohn's "extraordinary leadership" at the World Bank, and said Wolfowitz would be an "outstanding" successor.
Finance ministers from the G24 bloc of developing nations expressed "appreciation for the valuable service" provided by Wolfensohn, particularly "his effort to make poverty reduction the focus of the bank's operations".
Paul Toungui, Gabon's minister of state for finance and the G24 chairman, said the group now hoped "the orientation of the World Bank's actions will not change, because those of Mr Wolfensohn were going in the right direction".
Wolfensohn left a lucrative career in private finance to take the helm of an organisation widely seen as bloated and out of touch with the real needs of the world's poor.
Before his arrival, the bank had earned a reputation as being all too happy to fund the pet infrastructure projects of dubious leaders in the developing world, ensuring a build-up of debt that has now become a crushing burden.
Wolfensohn's tenure coincided with the explosive advent of the anti-globalisation movement, which has made the World Bank and IMF objects of vilification.
Under pressure in part from the protest movement, he is credited with turning the organisation into a more accountable force that pays far greater attention to the needs of the ordinary poor.
The bank now emphasises community-based projects, and credits itself with being the biggest external funder of education and HIV/AIDS programmes in the world.
Asked to dwell on his legacy, Wolfensohn said his proudest achievement was to have made the World Bank a cohesive body with the majority of its 9,300 staff employed in the field to take decision-making closest to where it matters.
"When I came, I remember, to my sadness, that you were getting 20, 30 letters a week saying what a terrible fellow I was and how awful the institution was, and you all had a lot of fun in those days," he told the press Thursday.
"I think those letters have stopped, at least for the moment, and as I leave, I feel that we have an institution that is cohesive, that cares, and that is conscious of the fact that it is not just money that drives the institution - it is knowledge, it is experience, it is caring," he said.
Wolfensohn also said he welcomed criticism from civil society, which has been happy to take him up on his word.
"There has been clear progress on education but harmful conditions on bank loans continue to undermine governments and perpetuate poverty," Oxfam International said.
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