[governance] Final CSIGC Nominating Committee Cover Letter and Report

[parminder]

Dear All

Most of the comments that I offer below are something I would prefer to 
do on a closed members only list, but since, for reasons which remain 
unclear to me, we dont have one, I will have to do so here.

First of all, I agree with what Avri said in an email - the MAG 
nomination process this time around has been a disaster. Let's not mince 
our words, since it is not a small issue. It involves basic questions of 
IGC's legitimacy in the eyes of the world. We cant simply let it pass by 
saying, ok, we learn lessons from everything in life. Civil society's 
very standing and legitimacy depends on its conduct, its processes, 
since we dont come to occupy the position we do with an specific 
politically legitimising process - nothing other than what we stand for 
and what we do. And this is legitimacy that needs to be renewed daily, 
and it is lost much much faster than it can be built.

The primary responsible for what happened must lie with the non voting 
chair, who, it is good to be reminded, unlike other nomcom members is 
not selected by lottery. S/he volunteers to take up the task. So, when I 
read hints of non performance of crucial tasks by the nomcom chair, I 
dont know what to make of it. And why in that case was the chair not 
replaced by the coordinators. And I cannot at all understand what is 
meant by statements like the following in the nomcom report.

    "....the participating members did not receive all communications
    pertaining to the process."


We need to know more clearly what is meant by this. What communication, 
and who was responsible for it. I understand part of it was that the 
nomcom did not get a very large proportion of the names to be 
considered. Who is responsible for this? What really happened? What else 
did not get communicated? These are basic issues of transparency and 
accountability, and we need to come completely clean on it. This is not 
being good and nice to each other. This is about our vision and values 
for democratic governance processes. We cannot go around preaching them 
to others if we cannot uphold even basic standards ourselves.

I think another important factor responsible for what happened is that 
that one of the co coordinator (the more experienced one ) was himself a 
candidate and thus could not involve himself to looking into and 
correcting the mess that was obviously developing. Coordinators, as the 
elected IGC office bearers, are the primary custodians of IGC's 
processes, and election offices for nomination processes. And this role 
is very necessary and can be performed without getting involved in the 
actual decisions about selection of the nominees. This has been done in 
earlier times. It is the coordinators who have to keep a very close 
watch at the process - and make themselves pro-actively available at all 
times to the nomcom for process related issues.

It has been a practice for long that co-coordinators do not stand for 
being nominated by an IGC noncom, and there was of course good reason 
for that. I think that we should go back to that practice, and if needed 
include it in the charter. I can clearly see how Izumi could not have 
taken any action nor given advice when things were obviously not going 
fine, and also, how, if he was in the position to do so, it is my 
judgement, that much could have been averted.

Just the fact that the names of a large proportion of the nominees did 
not actually get considered by nomcom  - becuase apparently they did not 
receive them - would make the outcome of the process infructuous  or 
invalid, though I dont want to labor this point. ( I believe that though 
the process was almost fatally flawed, it is the collective will of the 
IGC, including mine, the present set of nominees should stay as the ones 
that are fully supported and forwarded by IGC.)

I also think that the invitation for nomcom nominees was not advertised 
enough, especially close to the deadline, which is when most names pour 
in. Getting 10 nominees and selecting 7 of them does not sound very 
good, and is unlikely to further our cause as a group which claims to be 
the premier IG CS group, globally. And to advertise well is both the 
duty of the nomcom chair and the coordinators.

There were other oddities about the process - a list was put out as a 
provisional list of selected people, of which I dont see any reason. And 
then the nomcom report mentions this fact of putting out a provisional 
list as the reason that they could not do any later amendments etc. 
There simply seems to a lot of adhocism going around about what has to 
be a very serious and responsible process.

parminder


On Saturday 25 February 2012 01:53 AM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Firstly, allow me to take the time to thank the NomCom for completing 
> the task that was assigned to them. The work of the NomCom is not an 
> easy one.  They faced extraordinary circumstances that made their work 
> challenging.
>
> Their cover letter and report is enclosed. I thank all those who took 
> the time to apply and congratulate the Nominees and note the 
> recommendation by the NomCom to support APC's list of candidates. For 
> those that did not make the selection, I hope that you will please try 
> again when it opens up again.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Kind Regards,
> Sala
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Thomas Lowenhaupt* <toml at communisphere.com 
> <mailto:toml at communisphere.com>>
> Date: Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 7:24 AM
> Subject: Final CSIGC Nominating Committee Cover Letter and Report
> To: "Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro" 
> <salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com 
> <mailto:salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com>>, 
> "nomcom at lists.igcaucus.org <mailto:nomcom at lists.igcaucus.org>" 
> <nomcom at lists.igcaucus.org <mailto:nomcom at lists.igcaucus.org>>
>
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