[governance] COMMENTS SOUGHT: draft letter to ISOC on selection of T&A nominees for CSTD WG on EC

[parminder]

On Monday 18 March 2013 05:11 PM, William Drake wrote:
> <snip>
> My suggestion would be to not do a bilateral adversarial inquiry,
>> There us nothing adversarial here.
> Yesterday, allegedly speaking on our behalf, our co-coordinator publicly called an ISOC staffer a human rights violator.  Earlier, one of our members wrote to the head of the CSTD and asked that he not accept nominations from the T (no A) C stakeholder group until he's satisfied with their decision not to select him as their rep.  And so on…nothing adversarial?

Ok, lets try a fair assessment of this. You cite two instances. About 
the first, Norbert apologised just now. (I understand he wanted to say 
that denial of the right of Michael to question the process is a 
violation of his human rights, which he unfortunately put in an active 
voice with direct ascription of the violation to Constance which indeed 
sounded odd). About the second, connected to above issue, is it not 
Michael's right to appeal about a process that he feels has not worked 
fairly for him? What is wrong in it? We do it all the time here in IGC 
about IGC processes. Are all those instances to be considered as 
necessarily adversarial to the co-coordinators.

On the other hand, Constance in her official email calls simple efforts 
to seek transparency and public accountability from persons undertaking 
a public role as 'attacks between different stakeholder groups' , which 
I think was very unfair and an unnecessary escalation. In public life 
here in India, and I know in democratic polities everywhere, very high 
public figures write these kinds of letters very often to each other 
without them being referred to as 'attacks'. I think this term was not 
in keeping with democratic dialogue.

Even more, Constance's emails made a public observation, which clearly 
amounts to an accusation, that Michael was seeking nomination both from 
civil society side and 'technical and academic kind'. Note how 
problematic were her words, and I quote " unsuccessful applicants in one 
process should not engage in “constituency shopping” and question the 
entire process". We now know that this is not at all true. (And although 
Michael wrote an email on this quite a while back, there is no apology 
yet in this regard.)

Further, some IGCians took the cue from the word 'attack' and have made 
rather strong statements against those who raised the transparency/ 
accountability issues..........

I can take this to be normal heat generated in a political discussion, 
but to call one side (one which raised the questions first) being 
adversarial and having spoiled the pitch is completely untrue and unfair.


> <snip>
> There's no "before," people from other SGs are on the list, and judging from the side traffic apparently not all feeling emboldened right now about pursuing deeper dialogue and cooperation with the IGC.  Hopefully the situation improves

Well, this is a clear statement that those who 'asked the questions' are 
responsible for the reticence of those from whom the questions were 
asked... A very wrong and unfortunate construction, I think.

parminder

> and something useful eventually arises from all this sturm und drang.  Maybe Anriette's workshop proposal could help in this context; not exactly the right format, but at least it's a known vehicle.
>
> BTW I do agree with you (a third time!) that a more open and deliberative culture would be desirable across the SGs…We may wash our dirty laundry in public, but at least we wash our dirty laundry in public….
>
> Bill


-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t