Who is Watching the MCC?

Evidently not the Washington press. The New York Times broke the story of Paul Applegarth's resignation on Thursday, June 16, the day after the MCC CEO told his staff he planned to resign. On Friday the NYT's Celia Dugger ran some thoughtful analysis.Reuters and Associated Press both ran stories, which were picked up in places as distant as South Africa and London, where the Guardian ran an AP story that linked cuts in funding to Applegarth's resignation.Meanwhile, in Washington, the home turf of Congress and President Bush's signature foreign aid program, nothing.On Sunday, the NYT ran an editorial, Timely Departure that compared the progress of the MCC to that of the Fast Track Initiative, a multi-donor initiative which focuses on education and is run out of the World Bank. The editorial noted:

Both programs were announced in 2002...Since then, the Millennium Challenge program has signed contracts to give money to only two countries: $108 million to Madagascar and $215 million to Honduras. The program's board recently approved two more, Nicaragua and Cape Verde. Through the Fast Track program, rich countries have actually given money to 12 countries. During the first three years, donors shifted about $905 million in foreign aid to the qualifying countries for primary education; this year the 12 countries will get an additional $350 million...One reason the Fast Track Initiative got going quickly was that it did not waste years in assembling a staff of neophytes who narrowly defined strategies for growth to fit their ideological bent.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, finally noted the change at the MCC with a one-sentence Sunday report on page F3 that was part a gossip column titled Revolving Door. The column included the coming change in leadership in the flagship U.S. aid program along with several recent promotions within the Washington offices of big accounting and consulting firms. On Monday the Washington Post addressed the issue again with three paragraphs buried deep in Al Kamen's In the Loop column. Kamen wrote:

"Eyebrows were raised" recently when the MCC approved turning over the financial management of a large grant to Madagascar to a nonprofit, German-government-owned corporation.

Of course, raised eyebrows or not, letting Madagascar decide how to use the money is at the core of the MCA's vision and untied aid is generally good for development.Of course, alert readers will have also noticed that The Washington Times covered Applegarth's resignation in the final sentence of an upbeat story on the MCC on Sunday headlined: U.S. Certifies Three More Nations for Aid Program. Washington sleuths with experience reading Pravda and the People's Daily will have had no trouble finding the news!