Re: [cdf] CDF: Strengthening Partnership

My name is Georges Drouet, I'm the president of Prospective Internationale,
a Belgium based non-profit organisation which aim is to spread the use of
Prospective Science in the research of sustainability. Politics, economy,
social affairs, cultural matters, are our working fields. We work closely
with ISPO, the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation based in
London to promote a new world framework exempt of competitive concepts.
http://www.simpol.org

Following Dr. Khandakar Qudrat-I Elahi post, my comments are:

The question is to define which of the four key groups of the CDF is going
to take the helm in the use of  WB funds

- governments and other governmental bodies which are looking after the
benefits of their own ruling class, sometimes of their middle class and,
eventually, if there is some funds still, the poors

- multilateral and bilateral agencies also in charge of implementing the
wills of not only one country ruling class but the ones of two or more
ruling class...

- private sector which survival depends on its year benefits to keep
share-holders happy, be they national or international, looks to social
welfare as a business cost to be reduced as soon as possible and is
interested in seting the most skilled environment for its own growth

- foreign NGOs and national NGOs, the former being obliged to be
politically correct if they want to keep their financial ressources, the
later with little to say because of their weak logistic capacities and
political representativity

If I wanted to built a house, I would look after a loan in a bank and ask
an architect to design the house. Why should the bank had to be involved in
the design of the project it's financing? Does the bank have studied
architecture or is it a financial professional?

During 50 years, after the Second World War, the international bodies
issued from the Bretton Wood conferences, WB, UN, IMF, in one hand and the
European Commission in the other hand have being forcing Third World (TW)
countries to accept their ideas, some will say diktats... From an
historical point of view, the action of these international bodies arrives
in the post-colonialism era. In that time, the transnational companies
couldn't stand the idea of loosing ground in the so beneficial business of
importing commodities at the best price, i.e. the lowest one. This dilemna
was resolved thanks to the control of  development strategies issued by
First World (FW) governments. The corporate control of political power
drove development strategies to build power plants, harbours, highways, in
a global concept yet designed to maintain an international stream of
commodities from TW to FW countries. This is the clasical concept of core
and periphery. The impact of these strategies in the NGO sector was the
implementation of politically correct rules to be followed by the working
agencies if they wished still receiving public or private funds: they were
obliged to work on building the same corporate development concept. In one
hand the developement bill gave respectability and good conscience to the
donors country's political class when, in fact, in the other hand, a high
percentage of developement funds, ranging from 50 to 85 per cent, returned
to the hands of FW people, be they consultants, field engineers, raw
material providers, administrative staff and other related areas, working
in the developing country or in the FW base of the NGO...

Around ten years ago, two important things occured.

The first one was the prominence of the WTO (and its previous form, the
GATT) in the world system. The astonishing power of this economical
policies making body, almost politically independant, and totally out of
control of any democratic representation, have produced an imbalance
between the usual entities used by the corporate power to reinforce their
invisible hand in TW countries and its own new worldwide national
authority, the later one making the former ones almost obsoletes. I mean
the relevance of WB, IMF, UN and EC in designing development policies have
loosed ground because the real economical power is now on the WTO hands,
thus the corporate system doesn't need the Bretton Woods hidden support to
impose rules to international labour distribution. Development strategies
have been substituted by economical laws.

The second important matter is that the governmental development agencies
started to heard independant NGO voices worrying about the development
programmes' ineptitude: too expensive, no results. Some of the most
relevant international bodies, particularly ECHO, the European Commission
Humanitarian Organisation, decided to test a new concept of development
strategy. Ema Bonino, the EC commissioner, decided to open an
administrative path to the TW local NGO in a way to hear the field. Despite
the good intention of this will, the weight and the complexity of the EC
administration drove the project to a situation in which the lobbying
agencies are the main managers of the decision flow.

Is the WB going to follow this historical process or is it able to avoid
another twenty years of development fund misuse?

Is M. James Wolfensohn enough decided to pursue his strategy reform to
implement a really new and original development policy?

I'm affraid he's pretty hand-tied for it the Bretton Woods bodies control
by the US political class which in turn is totally controlled by the
transnational companies' power due to the corporate funding interference in
the US political life. The Pledge of Allegiance of the US political power
is on the hands of the world CEOs and they are not decided to leave the
system to be changed, for it the last resignations of some key people in
the WB, IMF, UN and the full independance of the WTO ruling and
disciplinary sections.

More than ever, the world bodies, which yet own a really weak, but still
being, democratic representation, are the servants of the economical
powerfuls. Is the time of Breton Woods' Directors rebellion arrived?

I'm affraid not !

Thank you for your reading.

------------------------------------------
Prospective Internationale
Georges Drouet - President

28, place Morichar  1060 Bruxelles
tel: +32 486 751 668
fax: +32 2 538 58 43
pimail@brutele.be