Dear Nigel, Thank you for your comments! Although I largely share your feelings with respect to this letter, I must note that they are right - according to the Bylaws NomCom IS an independent body and, yes, according to the Bylaws they can appoint whomever they deem necessary. If they ask for any guidance from us, it is their good will that is not prescribed by the Bylaws. I would expect, however, that they take our needs and wishes into account whenever possible. And here we come to the second point in their letter - they can only make appointments from the pool of candidates that apply. It is a valid point! And, if there is no interest to serve on the ccNSO Council from candidates outside of the ccTLD community, then probably we should seriously consider possible ways out of this situation. Kind regards, ]{atrina -----Original Message----- From: Ccnso-council [mailto:ccnso-council-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Nigel Roberts Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2018 9:26 PM To: ccnso-council@icann.org Subject: Re: [ccnso-council] FW: Specific requirements for NomCom appointees to the ccNSO Dear Katrina, I am writing you regarding the letter from the Nominating Committee's Chairperson, Zahid Jamil, that you recently circulated to the Council. This email raises a number of important issues in my opinion. To my mind, the view they take is re-opening an old controversy; a controversy which arose in the discussions between the ccTLDs on the one hand, and the ICANN Board's Reform Committee, on the other, back in 2002. It relates to structure of the ccTLD Global Policy Making body, our commitment to diversity, and a perceived need in the mind of some people for other parts of ICANN to be able to appoint people from outside the ccTLD community into a decision-making role on the ccTLDs' Council. So, it having been re-visited, I submit that it can, and must, be addressed in the upcoming ccNSO Review. We, the ccTLDs, in difficult negotiations and in the interests of reaching consensus, conceded to the then-ICANN Board's dogged insistence that the ccNSO was required to have additional diversity over and above the automatic geographic and cultural diversity that follows naturally from a regionally representative, elected, model. And as we have seen in the most recent difficulty, this has worked the other way than it was said to have been intended. That being so, in my view the NomCom's job is to serve us, and not the other way around (as it seems to me they may think) -- a perception I get from the tone used in the email, particularly the statement that:
"To be clear, the ccNSO's guidance is just that-guidance."
That is a clear "mind your own business" retort to our concerns, in my view. *********************************************************************** The principles of self-organisation, subsidiarity and independence of ccTLDs are no less important today as they were in 2003. *********************************************************************** Many of the NomCom appointees, incluidng our current colleagues have served Council extremely well. *Nothing* I say should be taken to be intended to detract from this fact. But those of us who live in countries where our Head of State is NOT chosen by the people know that just because a system sometimes produces good incumbents. such as our current Queen (1953 -) it also produces unwanted and undesirable results; see King Edward VIII (January-December 1936). In a representative system we have responsibility for electing the right people. Where things go awry with an elected Member, the process by which they were selected continues to have legitimacy. We do not have even that if the NomCom (as, I think we all agree it did recently) makes a mistake. Several appointments to the ccNSO over the years by the NomCom, particularly the most recent, have been controversial, due to questions of conflict of interest and disproportionate influence (the latest issue we had was either the third or fourth heads-up in recent years, if I am not mistaken). I have also noticed that each different NomCom can take a quite different view of what it thinks its appointment criteria are from that of its predecessors. An Appointments Board (which is in reality what the "Nominating" Committee is) must operate on objective, reasonable criteria, in my view. Ultimately, I personally find it somewhat hard to reconcile the principle of representative democracy which we embedded in the ccTLD structures from Day 1 in 1998 with the principle of appointment. but accepting that was part of a compromise in ICANN 2.0 But, if the NomCom appears unwilling to listen carefully to the objective needs of our community in carrying out the role WE entrust THEM with, then, perhaps we should consider whether we may be better off doing without their services altogether. _______________________________________________ Ccnso-council mailing list Ccnso-council@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/ccnso-council