[council] Re: Draft Revisions to the ICANN Bylaws Relating to GNSO Restructure

[William Drake]

From: Robin Gross <robin at ipjustice.org>
Date: April 7, 2009 8:55:46 AM PDT
To: liaison6c <liaison6c at gnso.icann.org>
Cc: liaison6c <liaison6c at gnso.icann.org>, Council GNSO <council at gnso.icann.org 
 >, Denise Michel <denise.michel at icann.org>
Subject: Re: Draft Revisions to the ICANN Bylaws Relating to GNSO  
Restructure

Dear Denise,

We appreciate your attempt to elaborate on the position you've taken,  
but in doing so you reinforce the view that you are no longer  
operating as a facilitator of the GNSO reform process, but rather as a  
dedicated advocate of a particular position.  I really don't  
understand why you are involved in this discussion at this level.  It  
is not your job to make policy decisions for the Board and it is not  
our task to convince you personally of the desirability of a  
particular GNSO structure.  It is rather an issue to be settled among  
the stakeholders themselves and by the Board.  The Board has proposals  
before it.  Let the Board decide whether it likes them or not.

Despite the length of your response, its substance can be boiled down  
into two simple points:

1)	The GNSO Improvements Report indicates that constituencies should  
remain an important part of the reformed GNSO;
2)	The Board has not given you specific instructions to change the  
assignment of Council seats to constituencies.

Both of those points are true, yet neither justifies the position you  
are taking.

1)	Constituencies can be an important and even central part of the  
GNSO process without being guaranteed a specific number of Council  
seats.  Please note that the NCSG charter we submitted actually makes  
it easier to form constituencies - precisely because it detaches them  
from Council seat assignments.  So in that respect, our proposal is  
more in line with the GNSO Improvement Report's references to  
"expanding Constituency involvement" and to "evening the playing  
field" among constituencies.

2)	The absence of specific instructions applies in both directions.   
We recognize that the Board has not told you to do what we are  
proposing.  But we also know that the position we are advocating is  
not ruled out by the GNSO Improvements Report, either.  This means is  
it is an open issue.  We should debate it and discuss it among  
ourselves, on the merits.  We have had many discussions with Board  
members and none of them have suggested that what we are proposing is  
inconsistent with the GNSO Improvements principles.

It is interesting that your responses keep ignoring the many, obvious  
problems that are posed by hardwiring Council seats to  
Constituencies.  These include: the difficulty of achieving balanced  
geographic representation; the problem that occurs when the number of  
constituencies exceeds the number of seats; the fact that forming new  
constituencies becomes a zero-sum game that obstructs consensus.  That  
is not an exhaustive list.  Also, you seem not to understand a  
critical part of the BGC's recommendations, which is that working  
groups - not the Council - will formulate policy.  It is the  
development of consensus in WGs - not the representation of votes in a  
legislative process - that is the objective of the Board's reforms.

We hope you will be able to recognize these problems, and allow the  
stakeholder groups and the board the opportunity to work through the  
issues in the "bottom up" process we read about in so many ICANN press  
releases..  Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robin Gross, NCUC Chair on behalf of NCUC Executive Committee and GNSO  
Council:
Norbert Klein
Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza
Mary Wong
William Drake
Carlos Afonso
Horacio Cadiz
Georg Greve
Robert Guerra
Dave Kissoondoyal

***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
   Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
New book: Governing Global Electronic Networks,
http://tinyurl.com/5mh9jj
***********************************************************

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