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NARR: Last month, when Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice announced the nomination of Randall Tobias, she noted his past experience as the CEO of AT&T and pharmaceutical company Ely Lilly.
RICE: Throughout all of his previous leadership positions, Randy has guided organizations through immense challenges and I am pleased that he will now bring his experience to bear on the organizational challenges of American foreign assistance.
NARR: Rice and other supporters of the nomination say that experience will come in handy because, as Director of Foreign Assistance, he'll be charged with merging dozens of aid programs into the State Department. But some groups say his corporate experience doesn't mean he'll make a good administrator of international development funding. Jodi Jacobson is the director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity.
JACOBSON: He has proven himself to be a good manager at the Department of State, but he has not proven himself to understand the nuances or the concerns or the issues pertaining to development assistance and the kinds of things that, for example, underlie the HIV epidemic.
NARR: For the past three years, Randall Tobias has served as the head of the federal agency that distributes $15 billion for HIV/AIDS programs. The agency follows the Bush administration's abstinence-only policy, which requires HIV educators to promote abstinence until marriage exclusively - and prohibits them from promoting condom use. Asia Russell works with the AIDS activist group Health Global Action Project. She says even though scientific research has shown that condoms can prevent HIV transmission, Tobias argues that they're not effective.
RUSSELL: Tobias is not dumb. He knows what the literature and what the data say, and they say something different than the political line he has often taken at the boding of the Bush administration.
NARR: Ellen Marshall, who works with the International Women's Health Coalition, says Tobias' stance on condoms is not just scientifically suspect, it's dangerous.
MARSHALL: The reality of lives, particularly for women and girls in developing countries who are increasingly at risk of infection, is that they need more than being told not to have sex or to be faithful, particularly when their husbands may not be.
NARR: But some activists think Tobias' track record with the government's AIDS programs has proved him to be a capable manager. Jove Oliver of the anti-poverty group Results says Tobias made AIDS funding more efficient and effective.
OLIVER: It's been a hard process to do because you had about five different agencies in the federal government that were working on providing some type of money or some type of assistance for HIV/AIDS. And he has done, organizationally, a very good job of bringing those five under one roof and streamlining what they're doing.
NARR: The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold hearings on Tobias' nomination next Tuesday.
SOC: Marcelle Hopkins. Columbia Radio News.