Five Latin American countries -Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Trinidad and Tobago- aspire for their respective candidates to preside over the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), without any of them sounding like favorites for now.
Although the countries had already made their names public in recent days, it was not until this Friday night that the IDB confirmed them through a statement, a few minutes after the deadline for submitting applications had expired.
The candidates are the Brazilian economist Ilan Goldfajn, head of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); Nicolás Eyzaguirre, former Minister of Finance and Education of Chile; Gerardo Esquivel, deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico (Banxico); the Argentine Cecilia Todesca, who was Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy General Manager of Institutional Relations of the Argentine Central Bank and Gerard Johnson, from Trinidad and Tobago.
This Sunday, the candidates will be formally presented in a closed-door session before the bank’s Board of Governors, made up of the finance or economy ministers and other economic authorities from the 48 member countries.
And next Sunday, November 20, it will be these who will vote, in secret, who is their chosen candidate to replace the Honduran Queen Irene Mejía, who has held the presidency of the IDB in recent weeks, after the dismissal of the American of Cuban origin Mauricio Claver-Carone.
The latter lost the confidence of the Assembly after an external investigation confirmed that he had a romantic relationship with a subordinate, who received several salary increases.
The former president was elected in September 2020 and became the first non-Latin American to hold the position. He did it in the midst of controversy since the then American president, donald trumpnominated him shortly before the end of his term.
The United States managed to get Claver-Carone to win then, after obtaining the support of several Latin American countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia or Uruguay, after the region failed to present a candidate that generated consensus.
In the vote that will be held on Sunday the 20th, the countries vote with different voting capacity. The United States has the largest, 30%; followed by Argentina and Brazil, with 11.3%, respectively; and Mexico, with 7.2%.
The winner, who is elected for a five-year term (and with the possibility of re-election), must also have the support of at least 15 of the 28 countries in the region.
The IDB is the main source of financing for the development of Latin America and the Caribbean and offers loans, donations and technical assistance to the countries. Of the total of 48 members, 26 of them are borrowers.
