[WSIS CS-Plenary] Oversight: Are we forgetting principles?

[Milton Mueller]

Let me begin by thanking those in Geneva for their incredibly hard and
often quite talented work. I understand the need to improvise out there
and to seize opportunities to influence the governmental negotiators. 

I do however feel concerned about the degree to which we are "flying
blind" on the key issue of political oversight of ICANN. As Bill Drake
pointed out a few days ago, Civil Society (and governments, too) really
didn't do their homework on this issue. Although we agreed that
unilateral US control was not desirable or viable, IGC never had a
full-fledged discussion of the risks and benefits of altering current
oversight arrangements. The WGIG report did not provide us with a well
thought-out set of alternatives, instead producing sketchy "models" that
raised more questions than they answered.

Now we are in a situation of thrashing about superifical ideas on the
fly, which to an external observer kinda looks like a medical operating
room with the surgeon saying, "let's move the heart over here and put
the liver over there," and his assistant saying, "no, let's sew it onto
the lungs over here," and the janitor walking by and saying, "seems to
me you could yank that whole mess out and he'd be better off," etc.,
etc. 

When we are reduced to that level of improvisation, isn't it clear that
we should back off and recognize that the issue isn't ripe yet, and seek
continued negotiations among governments, inclusive of civil society and
private sector? Doesn't the idea of a lightweight framework convention
seem like a better way to proceed?

Our interventions on the Multistakeholder Forum have been much better,
but here again we seem to have forgotten the issue of accountability,
democracy and legitimacy - how do people get onto this forum, how do we
prevent it from being captured by a small group that can never be
dislodged, etc. I would hope it is not too late for CS to articulate
certain governance principles, such as rotating officers, some kind of
democratic procedure for selecting people, etc.