PARIS — A former Mexican diplomat is expected to seek an unprecedented fourth term as head of the top international body monitoring economic policies and trends, setting up a potential fight with the Trump administration.
At stake is who will lead the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which receives one-fifth of its funding from the United States. The incumbent is Angel Gurria, who is serving his third five-year term — a circumstance that grates on critics.
“It’s not a monarchy,” Daniel Yohannes, the former top U.S. diplomat to the OECD, told the Washington Examiner. “I think he’s power hungry, and he wants to stay in the limelight.”
That’s a sharp rebuke of OECD Secretary-General Gurria from a former American colleague. Yohannes, the last Senate-confirmed ambassador to the OECD, aired the complaint amid rumblings that Gurria is gearing up for another campaign. A continuation would leave the intergovernmental body under the same leadership for 20 years, presenting Gurria with a rare chance to put a personal stamp on an organization founded in 1960.
“In May 2016, the OECD Council agreed on a timeline to elect the secretary-general,” an OECD spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner. “The process is scheduled to start in August of 2020, given that the present mandate expires in June 2021.”
The shadow jockeying for the post begins well in advance of the official process, according to Yohannes.
“What happens behind the scenes is he tries to speak to other countries, [tries] to get their commitment. Once he gets enough commitment, then the strategy is for him to declare his strategy,” Yohannes said. “But right now, I’m sure he is doing behind-the-scenes lobbying and all the politics that go with it.”
Gurria was elected unanimously to his third term in 2016, but that required unusual support from President Barack Obama’s administration because the U.S. favors term limits for the heads of international organizations. The OECD secretary-general traditionally is limited to two five-year terms — sometimes fewer. Gurria’s bid for a third mandate was boosted by the perception that he had done a good job of leading initiatives that were useful to the G-20 and the G-7, the blocs of the world’s industrialized economies, but he pledged at the time not to seek a fourth term, according to Yohannes.
“We organized, among members, that this would be the last time going forward for the organization; we don’t want to have a fourth term,” the ex-diplomat said. “I don’t know why he suddenly changed his mind and wants to run for a fourth term.”
The OECD, a 36-member group, is regarded as a premier place to collect economic data and study the results of economic policies in an international venue that is free from domestic political considerations. This dialogue is expected to take place among the member states, but Gurria, a former Mexican finance minister, has clashed with member delegations over his apparent desire to dictate certain policy outcomes.
“There have been some cases in the past where we had to tell him to back off,” Yohannes recalled. “This is an old habit of Gurria wanting to inject himself on different issues.”
That perception has worn away some of the goodwill that eased Gurria’s most recent election. “He just needs to go away,” Yohannes said.
