[WSIS CS-Plenary] Repsonse on procedural issue

[Laina Raveendran Greene]

Thanks so much Avri for speaking up and offering another point of view. I
agree with you and and am glad to see another perspective about how best we
could be making use of the situation we face, and still try to make a
difference. This would also hopefully avoid the unthought of ramifications
to other caucuses, who have come from long and far and may face hardships
from this hardline approach. 

Thanks for this input indeed!

Laina 

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On Behalf
Of Avri Doria
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 5:50 PM
To: Governance; WSIS Plenary
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Repsonse on procedural issue

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There has been a suggestion that CS should cease to make spoken or written
contributions to the drafting and working groups should they be defined as
'speak and leave' events.  I disagree with this position.

While I believe that we should make a very strong statement on the
procedural issue and that we should continue to fight the governments'
decision to exclude non governmental bodies from now until the end of the
prepcom, I do not believe that that we should stop speaking at the meetings,
even if CS is forced to speak and leave.  To do so, would in my opinion, be
tantamount to cutting off our noses to spite our own faces.  We represent
many causes and have important postions that needs to be aired and
considered.  To turn our backs on the speaking opportunities would be seen
as a relief by many of the governments for it would allow them to discount
all of the work, and progress, CS has achieved so far.  I think it would be
preferable for caucuses to continue to continue making their points both in
person and in writing so that the governments have no excuse for ignoring CS
issues. I also think it would be good to agree on a standard single line
statement that would be included at the end of every other statement the
caucuses made that indicated the CS speaker would be leaving under duress at
the end of their speaking time and indicating that the nature of the closed
meetings threatened the legitimacy of the entire enterprise.  On finishing
their individual statement each speaker could then leave without waiting to
be asked to leave, thus making the protest ongoing and visible.


I do think we should also be working on documents that are parallel to the
governments' documents.  In committee A I would recommend taking the chair's
outline and filling in the sections ourselves. So that we would have a
document with the same form but which was written according to CS
requirements.  I am not tracking B all that carefully, but I expect a
similar strategy would also work there.

thanks
a.


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