Naina Dhingra is the Director of International Policy at Advocates for Youth and serves on the Developed Country NGO Board Delegation of the Global Fund.

What do the President of MTV International, the former Norwegian Minister of International Development, and a senior Republican Congressman from Arizona have in common? They all are candidates for the top job at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. As I wrote in my last blog, it truly is election season this November.

The 14^th Board meeting of the Global Fund starts this week in Guatemala City and the most important decision Board members will make is the selection of who will take the reigns and lead this start-up development institution to maturity. The Global Fund was born just five years ago as an experiment in development and health financing. At the outset, the vision of the Global Fund was to serve as financing mechanism rather than an implementing agency by putting countries in the driver's seat to develop programs to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. History has proven that the experiment and the vision worked. In just five years, the Global Fund has raised $9.6 billion and committed $5.8 billion in 132 countries to programs that are saving people's lives. Today, because of the Global Fund, nearly eight million bed nets have been purchased to protect against malaria; one million people with TB have been treated through DOTS, and 400,000 people have been put on life-extending anti-retroviral therapy for HIV.

The Global Fund's track record has been so successful that companies like American Express, Armani, Gap, Motorola and Apple teamed up to launch the RED Campaign in the U.K, France, and the U.S. to raise money for the Global Fund (special note for uninspired Christmas shoppers- GAP's inspiRED t-shirts make fabulous Christmas gifts at just $28 a pop!).

But back to the Board Meeting – the current Executive Director, Richard Feachem has led the Global Fund from its birth with practically no staff to a robust development institution with nearly 200 staff members. Who can fill the shoes of this British professor? The candidates are (in no particularly order):

• Michel Sidibe: A citizen of Mali and the current Director of the Country and Regional Support Department (CRD) at UNAIDS.
• Jim Kolbe: Eleven term Republican U.S. Congressman representing the eighth congressional district of Arizona. Outgoing Chairman of the Foreign Operations sub-committee of the House Appropriations committee.
• Hilde Johnson: Former Norwegian Minister of International Development (1997 -2005) and currently Senior Adviser to the President of the African Development Bank.
• Bill Roedy: Vice Chairman MTV Networks and President of MTV International. Also serves as a UNAIDS AIDS Ambassador and Chair of the United Nations Global Media AIDS Initiative.
• Michel Kazatchkine: French AIDS Ambassador and former Chair of the Global Fund Technical Review Panel. Also served as chair of the International AIDS Society.

So who are the frontrunners? Well, unlike the WHO Director General (DG) election, I've been sworn to secrecy and can't fill you in on the gossip. The Global Fund Board agreed to a transparent, merit-based process to avoid the highly political deal-making that dictates the WHO DG election. While the Global Fund has broken down many rules of old-school development, it certainly hasn't figured out how to make decisions in a non-political fashion due the very nature of its board structure. So, it will remain to be seen how much politics actually stay out of the selection process.

Stay tuned next week for reports from my field visits to Global Fund projects in Guatemala and to find out who is selected as the next Executive Director!