Every Last One Of Them

by digby

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz admitted on Thursday he made a mistake and apologized for his handling of the promotion and pay increase of his girlfriend and staffer Shaha Riza. “I proposed to the board that they establish some mechanism to judge whether the agreement reached was a reasonable outcome,” Wolfowitz said in a statement he read at a news conference before upcoming meetings of finance ministers in Washington this weekend. “I will accept any remedies they propose,” he added. Wolfowitz defended his actions to send Riza on an external assignment to the U.S. State Department soon after he joined the bank in 2005, saying he was in “uncharted waters” in his new job. “In hindsight, I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations. I made a mistake, for which I am sorry,” he said. The bank’s board, which includes government representatives from the bank’s 185 member countries, was meeting on the matter on Thursday. After an adjournment, the board resumed their meeting focusing on whether Wolfowitz bent the rules on Riza’s promotion and violated staff rules. But the World Bank’s employee representative group called for Wolfowitz to resign during a staff meeting at the bank. “The president must acknowledge that his conduct has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff’s trust in his leadership,” according to written remarks presented at the meeting by staff association chair Alison Cave and obtained by Reuters. “He must act honorably and resign,” she said. Cave said it seemed impossible for the institution, whose mission is to fight global poverty, to move forward “with any sense of purpose under the present leadership.” WOLFOWITZ AT STAFF MEETING Witnesses said Wolfowitz came to the meeting and tried to defend his actions. The controversy spilled into the open last week when the staff association questioned the promotion and pay increase of Riza, prompting an investigation by the board. Wolfowitz, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, joined the bank after serving as deputy defense secretary at the Pentagon, where he was one of the chief architects of the U.S. war strategy in Iraq. Lingering distrust among many staff members and resentment over his close ties to the Bush administration and his role in the Iraq war has overshadowed his first two years at the bank. “For those people who disagree with the things that they associate me with in my previous job — I’m not in my previous job,” Wolfowitz said. “I’m not working for the U.S. government.”

Maybe he should have stopped acting like a corrupt Republican then.

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