Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments

[William Drake <william.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

It seems there are two levels to this discussion.  The broader one concerns the 
nature and role of the Council.  Kristina argues that the Council " has been 
greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism 
goes beyond that role," and that "having a slightly more complicated process at 
the SG level is far preferable to having the Council take on an SG role and 
make nominations independent of the community."  I wasn't around when the 
veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council 
reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this.  
While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a 
coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I 
did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes 
on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's 
RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community.  I 
thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and 
after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like 
what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle.  So then what decisions can 
we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's 
the boundary line?  If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will 
straighten me out in Brussels...

Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's 
proposal is not different from everyone else's.  The text clearly says "The 
Council will consider the resulting list of up to four nominees at its next 
teleconference.  If the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity 
objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional 
candidates..."  Two additional is additive, not substitutive.  To my knowledge, 
the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse 
only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the 
amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't 
recall anyone suggesting it on the call.  From my standpoint, this is even more 
problematic than what we were talking about previously.  It would either a) 
astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council 
could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over 
whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG 
sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to 
enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario.  

The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple 
and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the 
two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation 
within one SG in Nairobi.  This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite 
direction.

Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that 
Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose 
to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the 
stakeholder groups under item 2."  That plainly means only those identified by 
the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here.  In 
yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that 
the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has 
discussed SGs' back-up endorsements.  This is better from the standpoint of 
those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as 
I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would 
undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy.  But if it makes 
folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise 
sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered 
and the time allotted to each?  

Best,

Bill




On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:

> All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone 
> else.   I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of 
> what the Council might do to improve diversity.  If the Council was 
> successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the 
> diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 
> 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected.  
> The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the 
> original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the 
> original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates 
> seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the 
> Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was 
> unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO 
> endorsement.
>  
> Chuck
>  
> From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@xxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM
> To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck
> Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw
> Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
>  
> I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone 
> please forward it?  (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have 
> thousands of messages in my in box.)
>  
> The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has 
> been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed 
> mechanism goes beyond that role.  The greater specificity in the process, the 
> greater the certainty.  There was concern that the Council would move 
> directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional 
> candidates.
>  
> To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may 
> be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios
>  
> Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees):  Council receives 4 
> nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), 
> diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. 
>  
> Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met):
>  
> Step1:  Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but 
> diversity goals are not met.
> Step 2:  Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 
> SGs named 2) named by the SGs.  If consideration of these additonal 
> candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 
> candidates.  If not, see Step 3.
> Step 3:  Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool 
> (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or 
> identified as "additional candidates).  The last sentence in my number 4 was 
> directed to this step.
>  
> If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step 
> they weren't clear enough.
>  
> From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM
> To: Gomes, Chuck
> Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw
> Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
> 
> Hi Chuck
>  
> On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
> I personally support the motion as proposed because I think the required 
> threshold of 60% of each house for any additional candidates provides more 
> than enough protection to ensure SG support.  That would require 5 
> affirmative votes for the CPH and 8 affirmative votes of the NCPH, so no SG 
> could control the vote, not even with the NCA vote.  With that protection, it 
> seems problematic to add more complexity to the process.
> At the same time, if there are those who cannot support the original motion 
> as is, I think I could support a modification that would do the following:
> 1.       If the Council decides to try to improve the diversity of the pool 
> of GNSO endorsed candidates, they would first consider those alternate 
> candidates proposed by the SGs, if any. 
>  
> Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without 
> codifying it?  If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to 
> internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably 
> their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence 
> talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet 
> preferred.  Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse 
> to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
> 
> 
> (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG 
> could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.)
>  
> After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, 
> "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if 
> available." 
> 
> 
> 2.       If the Council is unable to approve any additional candidates to 
> improve diversity of the pool using only  SG proposed alternates, then they 
> could consider the entire set of candidates requesting GNSO endorsement.
> 3.       I would add one new wrinkle to this: SG’s should only propose 
> alternates that are of a different geographical location or gender than their 
> primary candidate.  In fact this would probably be a useful amendment to the 
> original motion.
>  
> I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even 
> considering people who were not so designated.
> 
> 
> What the IPC is proposing is that only applicants that SGs have previously 
> designated as acceptable back-ups could even be considered by the Council for 
> this purpose.
> 
> 
> [Gomes, Chuck]  I didn’t understand it as this restrictive.  I thought 
> Kristina said that the SG alternatives would be considered first; then if 
> that didn’t result in a successful resolution, other candidates could be 
> considered. 
> 
> That's what you suggested as an alternative.  Kristina's text says
> 3.  Change third bullet of #2 to read:  Each stakeholder group is encouraged 
> to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one 
> or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the 
> event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.  
> 
> 4.  Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list 
> does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a 
> whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those 
> identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the 
> list of GNSO nominees the desired balance.  If consideration of these 
> additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the 
> diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to 
> identify these additional candidates.
> 
> So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for 
> possible consideration could not be considered.  
>  
> Best,
>  
> Bill
>  

***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
 Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake
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