David Trilling of EurasiaNet runs a story about the bizarre behaviour of the World Bank country director in Kyrgyzstan. (It was on the front page of EurasiaNet yesterday - now it's moved to the Inside the Cocoon blog page.)
I saw the same story floating around Kyrgyz news sites and gave it a pass on my roundups.
Why? Because the Kyrgyz sources said that that the man was under medical supervision. There was concern that his unexpected and uncharacteristically erratic behaviour could have been the result of a stroke or a heart attack or something.
It just didn't make sense -- nothing Kyrgyzstan has been doing with the World Bank is so terrible -- at least, no more terrible than Uzbekistan, where the World Bank gives money supposedly to help agricultural reforms that really don't seem to reach farmers, who then resort to forced child labour, for example.
Yet EurasiaNet can't resist exploiting a story like this to take a swipe at Kyrgyzstan and the World Bank:
While the reasons for Kramer’s outburst remain unclear, it is not difficult to imagine an international donor having a fit of outrage in Kyrgyzstan, a country notorious for inefficiency, poor policymaking and corruption.
Yeah, we get all that, but World Bank staffers don't throw glasses at people and storm out of meetings even if privately they are unhappy. It doesn't fit.
Yes, I watched the video and it strengthened the sense that this could not possibly have been deliberate. Also, from the video it doesn't seem as if Kramer "hurled a glass" as Trilling says, quoting 24,kg, but just knocked over stuff.
There's Kramer, talking calmly and boringly as people do at these kind of meetings, not raising his voice, when suddenly, he gets up and knocks things over. He whirls around strangely, as a woman fends him off, knocking more things over, but then carefully turns back and picks up his folder.
If he were having a stroke or some kind of "hypertonic crisis" how was he able to so methodically pick up his folder -- returning to the desk to pick it up after his outburst -- and go and carefully pick up his coat from the coat rack? That seems odd, but it might be what happens when someone has an attack and is trying to recover by doing routine things.
The other people at the meeting continued the meeting as if nothing had happened, although heads were turned, so it is not likely that he said something that was so dramatic -- it was only his erratic jump and knocking things over and hurrying from the room. 24.kg said he had in fact expressed the willingness of the Bank to work with the government of Kyrgyzstan.
A Diesel user had a bit more on the story from knews.kg:
Andrew Kramer, head of the World bank office, who spoke first, noted the readiness of his organization to provide support to Kyrgyzstan, after which somebody called him on his mobile phone. After listening to the caller, Kremer suddenly shouted something loudly, threw down his headphones for simultaneous interpretation in the direction of the deputy prime minister, breaking a glass that had been standing on the table, and quickly gathering up his things, ran from the meeting room.
Knews.kg added that his colleagues had told reporters that Kramer had an "attack" and that his driver drove him home.
The point is, his colleagues have said he had some kind of "attack," he was taken to the hospital as the newscaster clearly says on the video and 24.kg also reiterated, so...why are we claiming that he's denounced Kyrgyz corruption?
Yes, we all wish the World Bank did more of that, but exploiting this odd incident to make that point really seems off base. Maybe he did have a stroke. Or maybe some bad news on the phone that upset him?
Why does this kind of blog post get done at EurasiaNet? Because there's annoyance in this quarter that the US government has made something of a poster boy of Kyrgyzstan as the democracy model for Central Asia, and the country with the highest level of freedom (press freedom and freedom for NGOs, not perfect, are surely higher than its neighbours).
And there's the US base in Manas, of course. And that means that "progressives" have to knock Kyrgyzstan in compensation, as a kind of corrective to what they see as over-indulgence by the US and possible evil military narratives in play and exploitation of local people. Yet once you crank the dial to go on this radio channel, everything you listen to fits that paradigm -- and maybe you just can't perceive something as what it is.
No Kyrgyz news sites seem to have anything more on that -- if it was the denunciation of the "corrupt Kygyz government" intended, we surely would have.
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