WTO: The Road of de Azevedo

Umberto Mazzei

28/04/2013

Opinión

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“It's not an election, it's a selection. That's the subtle difference”. Keith Rockwell, WTO spokesman.

The Brazilian Ambassador to WTO, Roberto de Azevedo, has covered a road full of snares in his successful bid for the office of Director General at the WTO. There is no murkier process to preside multilateral agencies than that. It is so opaque, that in face of criticism from members and observers, WTO spokesman, Keith Rockwell, had to embrace blatant sophist rhetoric and stated that the process to appoint the Director General of the WTO "is a selection and not an election, that's the subtle difference." The subtlety may be the lack of transparency.

In 2009, the last election for the office of Director General of the WTO was deserted; so the mandate of the French Pascal Lamy, former European Union Commissioner, was renewed even if he had no assets to present. This time, it was the turn of a representative of a developing country to be chosen, so there were 9 candidates proposed by Brazil, Costa Rica, South Korea, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico and New Zealand. Outside Brazil and New Zealand, the others are more or less clients to Europe or the United States. The strategy was to flood in order to avoid polarization and to open space to manoeuvre. The tactic was to divide developing countries and promote candidates who had already underwritten everything dictated in bilateral trade agreements (FTAs or EAAs).

Candidates

The first candidate to appear was John Kyerematen of Ghana, also candidate of the African Union. The second was Anabel Gonzalez, of Costa Rica, with obvious approval of the United States and the European Union. Then came Mari Elka Pangestu of Indonesia, Tim Groser of New Zealand, Jordan's Ahmad Hindawi Thougan, Taeho Bark of South Korea. The Africans were divided when Kenya presented Amina Mohameda and due to the weakness of Anabel Gonzalez, Mexico nominated Herminio Blanco.

A Brazilian candidacy was expected from the beginning, because Brazil is a developing country of the utmost importance, and the main Latin American country with an independent commercial policy. Brazil’s choice of Roberto de Azevedo is quite logical: he is a very popular ambassador, with a long experience in WTO, gifted with a conciliatory and binder talent, who possesses great technical ability and whose reputation doesn’t drag a politician’s past.

The electoral mechanics

In the WTO countries do not vote, as in other international organizations, publicly and under public scrutiny. At first, the Director General, was elected by consensus. In 1999, when there was none, the period was split among the two Asian candidates: Mike Moore of New Zealand and Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand. To cover the lack of consensus, since 2005, when Pascal Lamy was elected, there is a sort of confessional system. The arbiter is a Troika, made up of the Chairman of the General Council, the Pakistani Shahid Bashir, the President of the Dispute Settlement Body, the Canadian Jonathan Fried, and the Chairman of the Trade Policy Review Body, the Swede Joakim Reiter. These secretly hear the views of members, secretly record the preferences and publicly proclaim the winner.

According to a tradition in multilateral organizations, regions take turns in leadership. It is the reason for the Director General of WTO to choose four deputies from regions other than their own. Lamy, a European, had Asian, American, African and Latin American Deputies. The post of Director General was now due to an African or a Latin American, but Lamy said that it was written nowhere, disregarded this tradition and allowed candidates of any region.

The method of expressing and processing votes is decided ad-hoc. When Pascal Lamy was elected, there were only three candidates and it was a matter of simple arithmetic. With nine candidates the same electoral arithmetic could apply, allowing for a second round for the top two, but no, that was too simple. The President of the General Council announced that each country could identify four preferences, which have the same value. When the European Union wrote five names, it was said - a posterior - that four had been only a recommendation.

The first survey results

After the first survey, with four or five names of the same value, the President of the General Council, Shahid Bashir, who chairs the Troika, informed the candidates of Costa Rica, Ghana, Kenya and Jordan that they had been eliminated from the competition. There were still five: Roberto de Azevedo of Brazil, Taeho Bark of South Korea, Mari Elka Pangestu of Indonesia, Herminio Blanco of Mexico, and Tim Groser of New Zealand.

The latter survey results

For the second round members were asked for only two preferences and - after the European scam - it was specified that not less than one or no more than two. After this new survey there were only Roberto Carvalho de Azevedo and Herminio Blanco as sole candidates.

Who's Who

Roberto Carvalho de Azevedo has extensive experience in international economy and trade, including trade disputes. Before coming to Geneva as Brazilian Ambassador to the WTO, WIPO, UNCTAD and ITU, he was Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of economic and technological issues.

Before that he had been Director of the Department of Economic Affairs and the Dispute Settlement Unit, where he managed an agreement with the United States after having won, at WTO, the famous case against U.S. subsidies on cotton. He has been part in all of WTO negotiation rounds and was part of the Mission of Brazil in Geneva at the beginnings of the WTO.

Herminio Blanco is well known as a veteran negotiator. Under his guide, as Minister of Commerce and Industry and before, as Deputy Minister for International Negotiations, Mexico became a World Champion, by the number (34) of bilateral trade agreements, including NAFTA with the US (1994) and the EPA agreement with the EU (2000). It is exactly the opposite of WTO’s multilateralism.

Conclusion

The Brazilian candidacy of Azevedo is welcome in all regions, in all groups of countries, developed and developing. Azevedo is the candidate who can unite all WTO members in a balanced agenda towards common development.

The Mexican candidacy of Blanco is a favorite of prevailing interests in the United States and Europe. He is the man who suits the agenda that Wall Street in New York and the City in London dictate to Washington and Brussels.

Geneva, 28/04/2010 (version modified 1/5/13)

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/75695