SOUTH AFRICA: Former British prime minister Gordon Brown declines to say whether he would allow himself to be considered a candidate to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund

Record ID: 455497

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA: Former British prime minister Gordon Brown declines to say whether he would allow himself to be considered a candidate to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund
  • Date: 21st May 2011
  • Summary: GORDON BROWN WALKING WITH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
  • Embargoed: 5th June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: South Africa, South Africa
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: International Relations,Education
  • Reuters ID: LVAL2PR3R0PDQQPSIEE1W9TYTQR
  • Story Text: Former British prime minister Gordon Brown deflected questions from reporters in South Africa on Friday (May 20) over whether he should be considered a candidate to lead the International Monetary Fund.
    A Reuters poll of around 60 economists on Thursday (May 19) gave five votes to Brown, suggesting he is viewed as an outside contender for the job, after front-runner Christine Legarde and others. Legarde, France's finance minister, received 32 of the 56 votes predicting the next IMF chief.
    Outgoing chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned to fight charges that he sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid.
    During a visit to the Winnie Ngwekazi School in Soweto, Brown said Strauss-Kahn should be recognised for his contribution to tackling the global financial crisis.
    "I think from every continent in the world people recognise the role that the IMF has played in developing the response to the global financial crisis of which he was a very singular and important part. I want to thank him for that; I know that the chairman of the International Monetary Fund committee will be consulting round the world. He is the Singaporean finance minister and a very good person he'll be consulting around the world about the future of the International Monetary Fund and I want to say no more about that."
    Brown was interrupted by a reporter asking if he was "pitching" to be the next IMF chief and replied: "What matters to me is not who is in the job but what the institution does."
    Brown, who was also a long-serving finance minister under former prime minister Tony Blair, declined to answer further questions about his possible candidacy for the IMF job but said questions should be asked about the role of global financial institutions.
    "I think it is incredibly important that we ask what our institutions have got to do for the future and what goals they have to meet and I would single out global stability, which means that we've got to ensure that our banks are in a position to serve the public interest as well as they can. Global growth which is too slow -- and therefore we need action on global unemployment particularly youth unemployment -- and of course we need to meet the millennium development goals in education and I think that's going to be an important element of the work of every financial institution," he told reporters.
    Brown was in Soweto to launch his report, "Education For All; Beating Poverty, Unlocking Prosperity."
    The report calls on world leaders to tackle what he described as an 'education emergency' in the world's poorest countries, warning that failure to act will weaken economic growth and slow progress towards reducing poverty targets.
    Brown's main concern is that the world is slipping backwards from an international commitment made in 2000 to get all of the world's children into decent quality education by 2015, as over 67 million children today remain out of primary school.
    "Far from realising the millennium development goal that every child should be at school, we may be in a position where the millennium development goal objective which was to be met by 2015 is not going to be met in 2025 or 2055 or 2095, not even in 2105; that is how far away we still are from meeting the millennium development goal objective," Brown said.
    To address this crisis, the report calls for the creation of a global fund on education to back the efforts of national governments in Africa and other regions.
    The report will be presented to political leaders at the G8 summit in France next week.
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