[WSIS CS-Plenary] Repsonse on procedural issue

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

Dear Laina,
 Your questions were absolutely legitimate, both in terms of procedure and
spirit,
 In terms of procedure, I understood the show of hands friday evening as an
indication of the desire to have a statement strongly critical of what is
imposed on us. But it cannot be considered as a decision to walk out
completely : there was clearly no unanimity and civil society has no
mechanisms to adopt decisions by majority vote at that stage (and I hope
never). We need to discuss this in plenary (physical and virtual) on monday.

 In spirit, I fully support most of your comments as well as Avri's and
think we should not relinquish our right to speak. We just need to know how
to best use it.
 For the rest of your comments about the process and the way we are forced
to work, thank you so much for both expressing so clearly your concerns and
at the same time trying to move forward.
  I also thank Ralf very much for his comments that are very up to the point
on most of your remarks, particularly on the difficult pace of this PrepCom.
Even the "insiders" have difficulty keeping up and , as Ralf rightly said,
it is the mechanisms governments are imposing on Civil Society during this
PreCom that make our work so hard for "newcomers" and limits our ability to
be as pedagogical as we would like to.
 I was hoping to have a little more time yesterday to address your concerns,
but it was impossible. I will try to send a separate mail today to :
1) give a better background picture and list the main challenges for the
benefit of those coming to the process at that stage
2) propose a strategy for sub-Committe B around a rolling document
 Best
 Bertrand


 On 9/24/05, Laina Raveendran Greene <laina at getit.org> wrote:
>
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> 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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