Weds Feb 14: Immediate Release

Plans to stage a protest against the visit of a World Bank director Franco Passacantando this afternoon have been welcomed by Socialist Alliance PPC for Oxford East, John Lister.

Mr Passacantando is an Executive Director who has represented Italy, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Albania and San Marino on the Board of Directors of the World Bank Group since November 1995. He is to give a lecture in the Oxford University Exam Schools later today on "Reforming the World Bank & its Lending Policies to Developing Countries".

The World Bank masquerades as a "development organisation", and professes concern over world poverty, but is in reality one of the main driving forces promoting the Thatcherite "neo-liberal" agenda of privatisation, deregulation, devaluation and austerity in Third World countries.

In its half century of existence the gap between rich and poor countries has massively widened. Supporting calls for a protest picket at 5pm, and for any students who attend the lecture to ask searching questions, John Lister said:

"Among the more objectionable policies promoted by the World Bank is the privatisation of health care provision and imposing charges for treatment, even in the most desperately poor countries, many of them ravaged by the AIDS virus. This policy is condemned by the World Health Organisation, but forms part of the World Bank’s programme for health care reform in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

"Mr Passacantando and his reactionary ideas are not welcome in Oxford. Since the big protest against the WTO in Seattle the World Bank and IMF have been hounded out of cities around the world: they should be kept out of Oxford too."