[governance] Some thoughts on nomination processes

Mon Jan 13 07:17:08 EST 2014

Peter, your last paragraph hinges on the concept of affirmative action.

It has been of fairly dubious benefit, and has attracted fairly high levels of controversy wherever it has been applied, as opposed to grassroots capacity building among the underprivileged (or more accurately, where it serves as a permanent alternative to such capacity building).

--srs (iPad)

> On 13-Jan-2014, at 17:36, "Peter H. Hellmonds" <peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu> wrote:
> 
> Hi Parminder,
> 
> whether that honor of selecting representatives for a number of
> committees organizing the Brazil meeting was "bestowed" upon 1net or or
> whether someone in 1net decided to grab that role is beyond my
> knowledge. So, it is difficult for me to condemn or applaud this.
> 
> What I was referring to in my previous example was about decision making
> in an existing group, with an existing leadership, and what rules such a
> group could have uon which to base its decisions about expanding that
> leadership. From what I see, both the Brazil meeting and the 1net
> initiative were new and did not have any pre-existing leadership, so my
> group leadership example does not really apply to this case.
> 
> For something that needs to be created from scratch without a prior
> precedence, such as the Brazil meeting and 1net, there is a bonmot of
> one of my former bosses, who wanted to express that he expected me to
> not come to him for every minuitiae decision. He said: "He who takes
> charge is in charge!" So, when there is a leadership vacuum and things
> need to get done quickly, perhaps this example fits better than the
> previously mentioned, which applies to existing leadership structures.
> 
> Finally, my earlier example was not referring to marginalised or power
> groups seeking a role to play, but to individual persons seeking
> nomination to some leadership function. If you want to talk about the
> role of marginalised communities, it may be useful to look at a general
> rule about systems of political organisation. I always liked how
> Aristotle put it (in Book IV of his Politics), when he describes the
> different forms of government and calls a democracy basically the bad
> counterpart to a constitutional government (similar to how a tyranny is
> the bad counterpart to a monarchy) and where he says that when the
> majority in a democracy rules without the supremacy of law, then it
> becomes a form of demagoguery.
> 
> For me from that follows that any democratic form of government must
> seek to preserve the rights of minorities so that they are not
> overpowered by the majority. Whether that preservation of their rights
> extends to alloting one of a limited number of leadership seats to a
> representative of a minority, however, would be subject to the
> constitutional setup of such democracy.
> 
> -- Peter
> 
>> On 13/01/2014 12:21, parminder wrote:
>> 
>>> On Monday 13 January 2014 04:04 AM, Peter H. Hellmonds wrote:
>>> For over twenty years I've been "channel operator" on various chat
>>> channels. I always found my role to be akin to that of a janitor,
>>> someone who serves a community without demanding much in return. 
>>> 
>>> There was always one policy I followed when it came to selecting
>>> someone to become fellow operator: "s/he who asks for it will never
>>> get it."
>> 
>> On this criterion, most of all, 1Net should have been denied the
>> gatekeeping role to Brazilian meeting that has been bestowed to it. It
>> not only consistently asked for this role but virtually snatched it out
>> of what appears to be unwilling hands.
>> 
>> 1Net first made a unilateral announcement that it had this role (Adiel's
>> email to 1Net list on Nov 18) which is strange since it is the role
>> giver and not the role taker who usually makes such an announcement, and
>> evidently the Brazilian organising committee had said nothing of this kind.
>> 
>> That the Brazilian organising committee had given 1Net no such role was
>> evident from the Nov 26th formal announcement of the Brazil meeting.
>> This fact was confirmed by an email to these lists on Nov 27 by Carlos,
>> who attended the organising committee meeting. Carlos was responding to
>> direct question by Anriette who asked and I quote
>> 
>> "Does this mean that we no longer need to address our concerns about
>> civil society participation to 1net but that rather we can
>> engageconstructively with CGI.br?
>> 
>> To which Carlos responded
>> 
>> "Yes. We must ensure that all CS movements, groups and structures
>> havedirect access to the organizing commission, no need to use a single
>> conduit. "
>> 
>> I dont know how this situation got fully reversed by end Dec when 1Net
>> suddenly got thrusted into the gatekeeping role. One can only speculate
>> that a lot of arm twisting and political deal making would have gone in
>> there.
>> 
>> But surely, you can hardly say that 1Net was the good boy who never
>> asked for the role, as a reward for which it was given that role...
>> 
>>> 
>>> Why? Simply because those who want the spot don't want it for the work
>>> and service to others, but because it would make them appear "more
>>> powerful", "more respectful", "more important". Times and again when
>>> the policy was not followed, experience has shown and reconfirmed that
>>> deviating from it leads to bad results.
>> 
>> Would you now denounce 1Net on this criterion.
>> 
>> Or does your advice only extend to those who may represent marginalised
>> groups, with highly under resourced organisational capacities , and not
>> to the powerful and highly well organised ones..
>> 
>> parminder
>>> 
>>> Instead, those whom I asked to become fellow 'ops' were those who
>>> worked silently and diligently to create harmony, to develop sensical
>>> common positions, those who had service to the community at their
>>> heart and who would refuse the offer at first for fear of not being
>>> able to fulfill the position of trust to the best interest of their
>>> community. 
>>> 
>>> Perhaps this example could inform also those in and around this
>>> community in setting and in accepting the selection criteria and
>>> nomination processes. 
>>> 
>>> Of course, you are perfectly free to completely ignore this suggestion
>>> or to start a "shitstorm" over this. ;-)
>>> 
>>> Peter
>>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter H. Hellmonds
> <peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu>
> OpenPGP public key: http://blog.hellmonds.net/contact/openpgp/
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