Five nominees, including a woman, aspire to lead the IDB

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced this Saturday that Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago nominated economists with national and international experience for the presidency of the organization, whose source of financing ranges from 14,000 million dollars annually.

For now there are at least two certainties about the future leadership of the IDB: after the dismissal of the American Mauricio Claver-Caronethe reins could return to a Latin American or pass to a Caribbean, and if the Argentine candidate triumphs, she would be the first woman to lead the institution in its little more than six decades of existence.

The five candidates are Cecilia Todesca Bocco from Argentina, Ilan Goldfajn from Brazil, Nicolás Eyzaguirre from Chile, Gerardo Esquivel from Mexico and Gerard Johnson from Trinidad and Tobago.

Each one will present their vision of the organization and their leadership proposal to the IDB governors in a virtual meeting on Sunday. The formal vote for the new president will take place on November 20 in a hybrid meeting of the Board of Governors.

The new leader will be chosen less than two months after the agency’s executive directors approved the removal of Claver, a former official in the administration of former President Donald Trump and the first American to lead the IDB since its creation in 1959.

Claver was fired after an investigation determined that he transgressed the regulations of ethics by favoring a high-ranking collaborator with whom he had an affair.

Honduran Queen Irene Mejía Chacón, who was serving as vice president, assumed the interim presidency on September 26.

The new president will take office at a time when the Washington-based bank was shaken by what happened with Claver and the regionfaces bleak economic prospects due to the impact of the global slowdown, the tightening of access to credit and inflation, which could cause greater poverty and social tensions, as warned by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“There has rarely been an occasion when the IDB is more important,” he said in a telephone interview with Associated Press Jorge Heine, Professor of International Relations at Boston University.

“It is essential that it resume its task of promoting the development of Latin America and not become a foreign policy tool for the United States,” he added, stressing the importance of having its next leader be a Latin American.

The election process

To be elected, a candidate must obtain a majority of the voting power of the member countries. Voting power varies based on the number of shares each nation owns. The winner also has to get the support of at least 15 of the 28 countries.

The largest investor is the United States, which with 30% of the total funds has a key role in the election of the president. They are followed by Argentina and Brazil, with 11.3% each. Mexico represents almost 7.3%, Japan has 5%, Canada 4%, Venezuela 3.4% and Chile and Colombia 3.1%. The rest is divided into small percentages from various nations.

A few hours before the end of the term, Argentina nominated Todesca, an economist who studied at Columbia University and works as the foreign ministry’s secretary for International Economic Relations. She also served as deputy director of the cabinet and in the private sector, at the risk rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

[Con información de AP]

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