Posted on 05/02/2007 8:33:24 AM PDT by the Real fifi
May 02, 2007 The man going after Wolfowitz Clarice Feldman Since the chief antagonist of Paul Wolfowitz on the matter of the settlement is Ad Melkert then head of the World Bank's Ethics Committee, readers might be interested in knowing what he is up to now. From the Inner City Press:
UN sources continue to express surprise that Mr. Melkert's hiring of Eelco Keij, an operative from his political party, the Dutch Labor Party, has not triggered any formal review by UNDP or its Executive Board. And beyond direct personal conflicts of interest, these UN insiders enumerate Mr. Melkert's incongruous talk but no action on issues of ethics at UNDP since he has essentially run the agency
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The World Bank (which Wolfy foolishly wants to expand) shoudl be abolished.
It should be cleaned up and reformed or abolished. The UN is beyond redemption and should be closed immediately.
Next—a close look at the IMF which is somewhat better but suffers from many of the same problems though perhaps on a smaller scale.
Actually, a corrupt and inefficient World Bank probably would do less harm than an efficient one.
There’s a biography at Wikipedia. It whitewashes him, but you can still get a pretty good picture of a cowardly, scheming, professional leftist hack.
Here’s an extract of Melkert’s political career in The Netherlands, before he got blown out of the water by Pym Fortune and went into international politics.
The elections went in an entirely different direction, when Pim Fortuyn, the flamboyant populist entered the elections. Fortuyn, who campaigned on issues like migration, integration and the state of the public sector, concentrated his campaign on the PvdA, intent on showing that that party was responsible for what he called the “ruins of eight years of purple”.
In several televised debates between Fortuyn and Melkert it became obvious that Fortuyn was the better debater and more charismatic politician. In the now famous debate on the night that the results of the municipal elections were made public, Fortuyn and Melkert debated. Fortuyn, who just won the elections in Rotterdam made a lively enthusiastic impression, while Melkert sat slumped behind the table. This image dominated the rest of the election campaign. A later debate on the program Netwerk was also very typical for the different style of Fortuyn and Melkert: in the one-on-one debate, Melkert responded to every question of the debate leader with a detailed plan, and every time Fortuyn proposed one his plans he said: “Footnotes! Professor!” implying that Fortuyn’s plan weren’t realistic and lacked detail. This however created an arrogant image of Melkert.
During the elections the competent career politician Melkert attempted to humanize his image: it was revealed that he liked cooking (he published a cookbook on his personal website), and that he was big fan of Feyenoord. Nonetheless the image of a somewhat boring bureaucrat remained. In May 2006 Melkert told politician-turned-television maker Paul Rosenmöller that “he had hid too much in the tower of the governor”, creating a paternalistic image, “something which did not appeal to the voter.”
During the election campaign, on May 6, 2002, Fortuyn was killed by Volkert van der G.. Consequently small riots erupted in the Hague, where Melkert was at the time. He left the city in a hurry. Melkert began to receive death threats, and he and his family were forced to go into hiding for a short while.
Melkert’s PvdA lost nearly half its seats in the Tweede Kamer and went from 45 (out of 150 seats) to 23. The party fell from first place to fifth. Melkert resigned as political leader on the evening of the elections; he was replaced by the former speaker of the Tweede Kamer, Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven. Melkert stayed in parliament for a short while. His last major debate in parliament was on the state of the European Union.
Thanks.
It’s possible Melkert’s game is back firing. A Huff Po poster suggests it’s time for the WB to make public all salaries and perks. HEH
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/if-wolfowitzs-critics-at_b_47293.html
His his predecessor, Mark Malloch Brown of Britain at the UNDP lived in a luxurious townhouse owned by Soros while serving in that post—at a highly discounted rent—and no one considered that unethical.
Rich Lowry at NRO reports that Brown has now taken over as the head of one of Soros’ hedge funds.
Don’t you just love how this kind of guy always seems to end up as the head of the “Ethics Committee”?
Kind of like the US congress.
HEH!! The more I think of it, the more likely it is that given the history of nepotism there, he expected Paul to balk at the demand Riza leave and make that his fight. When Paul didn’t and complied with his demands, he played nice..Seeing the shift in the wind, he clammed up when the selective leaks and smears were publicized and now thought he’d move in for the kill with some more lies.
Maybe we ought to check the safes at the UN for more documents on this—
In asserting that the Bank’s demand that Ms Riza be seconded from the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz noted the inconsistency in the application of the Bank’s conflict-of-interest position, that it had not minded that the wife of former Bank Managing Director Zheng was not forced from her position.
Zheng has filed a facially preposterous response
[quote]The Bank’s rules, according to Zhang - and presumably he should be in a position to know as the Bank’s number two manager - permitted
“husbands and wives to work at the bank under circumscribed conditions, which he said he followed, but that they barred anyone from having a sexual relationship with a top bank official outside of marriage.” (emphasis added)[/quote]
Kenneth Anderson says if such a rule actually exists it would certainly discriminate against gays and wonders where are the normal defenders of gay rights on this.
In actuality he cannot find such a rule despite seeking it from the Bank and concludes:
[quote]Is this really the Bank’s rule? Could it really, truly be that the World Bank would have a rule so nakedly anti-gay? I asked informally - I didn’t talk with the Bank’s lawyers, as it seemed unlikely anyone would dare respond - and no one seems to know. Zhang calls it an “express prohibition.” But where is it written down?
It seems quite possible it is written down somewhere. It seems quite possible it is not written down anywhere - and that the Bank, if pressed on this issue by some NGO group, would deny having any such rule. It also seems quite possible that the Bank has indirectly addressed some such question in some obscure memo from the ethics committee, or some internal employment review panel, or some internal thing - which maybe counts as “express” or maybe just counts as something that no one quite knows about but which can be triumphantly pulled out of a file as needed - or, on the other hand, quietly forgotten if not.
One of the insistent lessons of the Wolfowitz affair with respect to Bank governance is that the Bank manages that great bureaucratic feat, so reminiscent of the “soft” Communist regimes of Yugoslavia, Hungary and today, China (and Zhang’s language sounds less like a banker than that of a Chinese Communist Party functionary, does it not?), the twin, simultaneous qualities of infinite discretion combined with infinite rules. A bureaucracy that has a rule for every occasion - and the discretion to ignore them whenever and however it feels like. No wonder the institution is so resistant to Wolfowitz’s rule of law agenda.[/quote]
http://kennethandersonlawofwar.blogspot.com/2007/05/anti-gay-couple-rules-at-world-bank.html
Thanks for the ping!
There are millions of citizens in Holland who still have a big grudge against this Melkert (I am one of them) because of his participation in the campaign of hate and smear against Pim Fortuyn (nationalist, reformist, populist) who had massive popular support. Melkert personifies everything these people detest in a politician, and he deserves to be exposed for what he is: a hack. I hope he and his ilk who populate international institutions for personal gain go down in flames. Wolfowitz, whatever you may think of him due to his connection with neocons and the difficult situation in Iraq, is just the man to do the job to turn this attempted smear around and clean house.
I think so, too. I dohope some of this stuff about Melkert is getting ink in Holland. (I loved Pym BTW, and was horrified about the way the press treated him when he began—as if one had to be a jack booted Nazi to sound the alarm that the Dutch liberal ethos was resulting in the immigration of so many people to whom that tradition was anethema and that it would die unless action were taken.)
You can say that again—and so is the former gc of the Bank who was one of the few people there ever forced out of that sinecure and Zheng whore response is risible..
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