Despite the International Monetary Fund’s rhetoric about transparency and openness, at its press briefing on Thursday it declined to answer or even acknowledge timely submitted questions about how it will decide whether to allow Honduras’ de facto Micheletti regime to use the funds the IMF has allocated, after the coup, about conditions imposed on Jamaica and staff reports withheld about Sri Lanka.
This is happened before with the IMF, when the spokesperson has stood smiling on camera in the Fund’s auditorium in Washington claiming that, "There are no more questions."
On Thursday, it was Caroline Atkinson delivering this line, after waiting to take two separate rounds of questions from another media organization. (Ms. Atkinson made a reference to the IMF’s question-accepting technology — could it be filtering?) From among the questions submitted to the IMF online, the IMF picks and chooses which ones to read out loud and acknowledge. There is no transparency in how this censorship is conducted, even that it is taking place at all.
Nevertheless, Inner City Press has respected the IMF’s 10:30 a.m. embargo.
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