Already in Madrid

When the evening spread against the sky
by Ahmed Swapan

On the fine morning on 3rd May 2008, the beginning of the first day of the ADB annual meeting, CSOs met ADB President Kuroda and expressed concerns to know some direct and clear responses from the president of its policies and future directions. CSOs met the president in a pre-scheduled meeting in IFEMA centre.

President came in, closely looked around standing some time and then sat on a chair and started speaking very slowly. As observed, he does this always as a strategy to meet up his tactful strategy to finish up his allocated time for one hour discussion with NGOs, he repeated this again. He was very cold and timid, he was very calm and quite, uncaring and irresristable to his biased spirit and mind which may be appreciated among his colleagues inside the Bank, as he is successful being able to left over CSOs concerns, but one can logically argued how a President should look like in an institution like ADB whose mission is to reduce poverty of the world poorest region. A president should look like dynamic, very warm and young in spirit, quick but logical to honour the concerns. How could a very cold and slow Head run an institution aiming at helping world’s most of the poor countries? Only eight questions on behalf of CSOs for an hour, he responded, not satisfactorily, rather leaving into despair, into confusion, as he appeared strongly biased to the corporations neglecting people’s concerns. He could have taken twenty questions from the CSOs and could answer them all very directly. But all along confusions! All along misleading! And it reflects the nature, also symbolically signifies the core heartlessness of the agency towards people.

So the fine sunny morning became pale and gloomy and spiritless, thus the clouds were spreading the sky, the blue, the colours of the sky turned down, a very confused and despair sense of mind winding around the IFEMA centre in Madird, a drowsy numbness pains the senses all day long.

Clouds are still floating in the sky. How long we desire for for a bright sunny morning!