Tijani Ben Jemaa, At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) member from the African Regional At-Large Organization (AFRALO) and ALAC Executive Committee member, composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 105 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists.
On 12 October 2012, this Statement was posted on the At-Large Use of a Drawing for Prioritizing New gTLD Applications Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of ALAC to send a call for comments on the draft Statement to all At-Large members via the At-Large New gTLD Work Group mailing list.
On 2 November 2012, a version incorporating the comments received was posted and the Chair requested that Staff open a five-day ALAC ratification on the Statement.
On 10 November 2012, Staff confirmed that the online vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 14 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions. You may review the result independently under: https://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=2736qFPPLmrm5IU3N6GH5irb
The Chair then requested that the Statement be transmitted to the Public Comment process, copying the ICANN Staff member responsible for this Public Comment topic.