Bipartisanship has come to Paris. Fantastic! No more storming of the Bastille.
No more internecine political conflict between the left and the right. We are referring of course to the announcement that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, has endorsed Dominique Straus-Kahn, a socialist, as the next head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sarkozy said that he made this choice because he was obliged, as the President of all the French, to play a unifying role and to tap the services of all talented French citizens, regardless of their political affiliations.
What statesmanship! What vision! What incredible generosity of spirit!
But hello, why is the IMF, an international body, being used by Sarkozy to score a domestic political point? And why does German Chancellor Angela Merkel feel that she too has a right to nominate a German for the same office? Why does the West assume the IMF head must always be a European and the World Bank chief an American?
This arrangement may have made some sense in 1945. The American economy dominated the world like a colossus then; Europe, though devastated by war, contained the world's colonial powers; and Asia was poor. Sixty years later, things are very different.
Two of the world's five largest economies now are Asian - Japan (second) and China (fourth). Europe also has two among the top five - Germany (third) and Britain (fifth). In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, though, China is the world's second-largest economy, Japan third, India fourth and Germany fifth.
France, the land of bipartisan mirth, is in seventh place in PPP terms and sixth in nominal terms. California, if it were a country, would come next in the global GDP rankings. Thank goodness California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has not been moved to nominate a Californian political opponent as IMF chief.
This is a ludicrous arrangement and it is time it stopped. The global economy exists and Europe and America are no longer its sole centres. Europe and the US reduce the international credibility of the IMF and the World Bank by treating them like old boys' clubs.
These institutions should be run by the best-qualified people, irrespective of their nationalities. It is not always easy to determine who they might be, but the assumption the best must always come from Europe or the US is no longer acceptable. Asian governments, together with their African and Latin American counterparts, should press this case in the IMF's and the World Bank's governing bodies.
Let Sarkozy be bipartisan - in France. Let the IMF be run by the best - possibly an Asian. Bipartisanship has come to Paris.
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