[governance] Preliminary List of Nominees for the 2013 MAG - REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

William Drake william.drake at uzh.ch
Fri Jan 18 09:14:34 EST 2013


Hi parminder

On Jan 18, 2013, at 2:03 PM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

> 
> On Thursday 17 January 2013 03:10 PM, William Drake wrote:
>> Hi Parminder
> <snip>
>>   I also find it ironic given the high standards of disclosure demonstrated when you were telling the IGC to support the Indian government's CIRP proposal without mentioning your role in it, and so on. :-)  
> 
> Interesting accusation. Now that you have made it, I hope you will not run away from pursuing it, and provide the sought clarifications. 

You're right, it was wrong to have teased you without expecting an extended interrogation in response.  So I withdraw my remark and apologize for making it.  Anyone who cares and has time can look through the list archives and make what they will of things.
> 
> (1) What do you mean by 'my role in the CIRP proposal' - what role you see I had in the CIRP proposal?
> 
> (2) What do you mean by 'without mentioning your role in it'
> 
> YOu know it pretty  well that ITfC presented its version of CIRP proposal first in dec 2010 during UN DESA consultation on EC, which were public, and our submission was also separately submitted to this elist, and had limited but harsh criticism from the likes of Adam. The second time ITfC's proposal was  publicly discussed was during the Rio meeting in Sept 2011, and the concerned paper we wrote also submitted to the IGC.  What better transparency do you expect. Of course, we advocate actively about all our IG and other proposals with all the concerned actors. That is what every advocacy organisation does, isnt it.  Now if India liked our proposal and submitted a (considerably) modified version of it as its own - where does 'disclosure' issue comes in. Can you think of an NGO adopting greater transparency. ITfC has always boldly stood up for whatever we believe in... it is always all out there, even at the risk of being unpopular. 
> 
> While all the above was always very public, when a Daily Mail article made dark hints about CIRP proposal and the role of various actors in it, and I think McTim asked us to respond on this list - I wrote a 7-8 pager with all the details, about what happened and how... Because we at ITfC do believe that such transparency and accountability is the very basis of whatever legitimacy civil society has... Every question that is publicly asked must be fully responded to. And we always do...
> 
> BTW, apart from answering the above two questions, can you also remind me when did I ask IGC to support the CIRP proposal? I of course often did try and expose the hypocrisy behind much of the opposition to the CIRP proposal, mainly in terms of the close engagement of many of the critics with a very similar structure at the OECD level doing similar work that CIRP was supposed to do. 
> 
> And then there is the unfortunate 'look who is talking' aspect to all this... Michael earlier raised the issue of the deep and systematic nexus between US delegation and civil society at the WCIT meeting. I am not against one off strategic linkages between CS and govs, including being on official delegations, and preparing statements/ drafts for govs, in order to obtain outcomes that a set of civil society actors in any case believe in. However, what happened at WCIT was rather, as I said, systematic and deep, and for a big range of CS actors. And, well, there has been no reporting on how this was all managed by CS actors. Bill, you were coordinating CS statements (at the BestBits meeting) at the same time as you were sworn to protect US national interests. Or am I mistaken... You were also all along active on IGC list mouthing the exact US positions….

I "mouth" my positions.  On WCIT, these overlapped with the US positions to comfortably serve on the delegation.  There were also points on which I didn't agree with the USG view.  I did not draft the US text or encourage the IGC to support the US text. I did oppose the ill-intended or ill-conceived WCIT proposals like most others.  I don't think our two engagements are terribly comparable.  

> Even when Mike spoke about the CS and US delegation issue, even if you were sure about where you stood and being right and unsullied, like I gave CIRP related explanations so many times on this list - including now, maybe you also should have responded with something (Avri did make a response). 

I didn't read whatever was said.  

Cheers

Bill









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