São Paulo – This Monday (13th), the French minister of Finance, Christine Lagarde, won the support of the United Arab Emirates to her candidacy for managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She arrived in the region on Saturday to visit the Arab countries and request their backing. The other candidates are the governor of the Mexican Central Bank, Agustin Carstensan, and the governor of the Central Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer.
The position has been vacant since May, when the formerdirector, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested in the United States, accused of attempting to rape the maid at a hotel in New York. He was arrested when he was already inside the aircraft that would take him to Paris.
The Emirati minister of Foreign Relations, Obeid Humair Al Tayer, claimed that he supports the French candidate because of her competent work at the helm of the French Ministry of Finance, and because she has made “notable” efforts while France presided over the G-20, a group comprised of 19 industrialized economies and the European Union. Last Sunday, Christine won the backing of Egypt to her candidacy, after speaking to the Egyptian minister of Foreign Relations, Nabil Al Arabi.
The French candidate, however, has not obtained backing of Saudi Arabia yet. Like China and Brazil, the Arab country is against the rule that the position of managing director of the IMF must be occupied by an European, whereas the World Bank must be headed by a North American. The rule has been met ever since the inception of the IMF and the World Bank, under the Bretton Woods Agreement, in 1944, during World War Two.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
