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Gilbert Houngbo – Candidate for ILO Director-General

Gilbert Houngbo from Togo was the first candidate to be interviewed. He started by explaining his perspective growing up with hardship and poverty in Togo and his determination to address the hardship and poverty of others. He touched on the current trends (pandemic, climate change, deglobalization) for which the ILO is well placed to mobilize people-centered action toward a “new global social contract”.  He drew on his extensive experiences in the UN system specializing in development, his four years as a DDG at the ILO and his current leadership of IFAD, as well as his four-year tenure as a prime minister in his home country of Togo.

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Mthunzi Mdwaba – Candidate for ILO Director-General

Mthunzi Mdwaba from South Africa was the third person to be interviewed. Mr. Mdwaba has had direct experience with the ILO, all within the Employers Group and emphasized his commitment to “three-legged pot” of tripartism. He is listed as an Employer delegate to the ILO Governing Body as far back as 2010, but his biography only refers to his ILO-related credentials since 2017 when he was elected to lead the Employers’ Group in the Governing Body for a term that ran from 2017 to 2020. My recollection is that his competition for this position was Ed Potter, a long-standing American representative to the Employers Group and world-renowned expert on ILO labor standards. Mr. Potter’s last major leadership role was to represent the Employers Group in negotiations regarding a very controversial (to the Employers) normative process to cover global supply chains. Continue reading “Mthunzi Mdwaba – Candidate for ILO Director-General”

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Democracy in Jeopardy: French Case Study, Round 3: the 2022 Presidential Elections

The campaign for the French presidential election in April is in full swing – minus the most obvious candidate, Emmanuel Macron – who is also the front-runner.  Here it is already mid-February, less than 60 days to Round One on 10 April. His announcement has been expected for some time in mid-February but has clearly been delayed, given his preoccupations with an odd combination of diplomatic and domestic uncertainties. In this series of essays on “Democracy in Jeopardy”, I have been looking at the challenges to democracy even where democracies have traditionally been the strongest – in countries like France, India and the United States. In this essay, I survey the 2022 French presidential election campaign, with its plethora of competing candidates, all of whom are maneuvering to be the one to defeat President Macron’s expected bid for a second run to the Elysée Palace. Will this election help to reverse the alarming signs of global disillusionment with democracy, even in a country like France, or will it fall prey to ever more bumps on the road? Here’s a first look at the French scene, with additional segments planned as the campaign unfolds.  Continue reading “Democracy in Jeopardy: French Case Study, Round 3: the 2022 Presidential Elections”

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Step by Step toward Resilience: A Commentary on Climate Change

In my ongoing campaign for multi-stakeholder collaboration, I have had a strong reaction to the film “Don’t Look Up” and the media attention it has attracted. I understand why Leonardo di Caprio’s well-known activism regarding climate change makes it an obvious comparison to the apparent failure of the Glasgow Summit on Climate Change (COP 26) to avoid the looming catastrophe of global warming. But it inspires me to share my somewhat contrary views about climate change.  I do agree that climate change is happening and that much more needs to be done to avoid a catastrophe. But I also believe that the political will to do more depends on our building popular support for action through multistakeholder collaboration. Here is my commentary on what this means for us. Continue reading “Step by Step toward Resilience: A Commentary on Climate Change”

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Obituaries 2021

What is most striking, as we end this dreadful year of 2021, is the transitional nature of things but also the appallingly non-transformational nature of things. I am struck by the passing of a number of transitional  figures who made their mark on current versions of history and, what is more important to me, in this particular commentary, is that they made a mark on me personally.  Here, in no particular order, I reflect on the impact of Vernon Jordan, Walter Mondale, Colin Powell, Bob Dole, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, John Ruggie and Desmond Tutu. Quite a collection! Only one of them, as far as I know, was  a loss attributable to the coronavirus itself (Colin Powell), but their losses have simply added to making this a year of sadness and melancholy for me. Continue reading “Obituaries 2021”

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Pandemic Musings Chapter 8: OMICRON and Christmas Disruptions (updated 31 December 2021)

How can the personal story keep changing? The tiresomeness of cyclical ups and downs with no apparent pattern to them is wearing thin on all of us. Here in France, the delta variant was driving what was described as the fifth wave in this November/December 2021 timeframe, while the US or even the UK were measuring it as a fourth wave. Our personal relationship to the pandemic, nonetheless, was settling down to a gradual phasing out of COVID-related restraints, especially when we both got our boosters for extra-certain protection. But then the omicron variant suddenly burst onto the global scene. And even more disrupting for us personally, our long-awaited visit from our son and his fiancée was turned upside down by his  testing positive for COVID  shortly after his arrival here – and the rest of us only days later! Instead of spending an early Christmas with them and sending them home to Richmond for the main event, we were all in mandatory isolation through the holiday right here at Villa Ndio. Continue reading “Pandemic Musings Chapter 8: OMICRON and Christmas Disruptions (updated 31 December 2021)”