This message is being sent on Dev Anand Teelucksingh and my behalf. As agreed during our Thursday OFB meeting, you should forward this message to the ALAC on behalf of the OFB and you may also copy the CPWG for its information.

The attached document was created by the ALAC Objections small group and subject to one concern (see below), has the support of the small group and those present on the OFB call on 01 May 2025. During that call, a majority of ALAC Members were present and unanimously supported the document (those present were Aziz, Bukola, Claire, Eunice, Justine, Lilian, Satish and Shah).

Jonathan may choose to conduct a new poll of the ALAC to include all Members, or rely on the poll already taken.

The concern mentioned is as follows: Tijani has expressed concern about the option for a gARG member to recuse themselves from a specific application(s) instead of resigning. He feels that allowing recusal and not mandating resignation may impact our credibility and lessen the strength of our objections, and that the gARG should be fully free of any conflict with ALL applications. If that is not the case, the applicant may use this to attempt to undermine our standing. He also feels that no one is indispensable and the rest of the gARG people can cover anything.

The counterargument is that a resignation of a person with specific skills or knowledge due to a conflict with one application may impact our ability to respond to another un-connected application and may impact our ability to respond to an appeal. Moreover if there are multiple such resignations the overall team may be impacted. Recusal is an effective remedy in the ICANN Board and should suffice for us.

Although we did not take a full poll of the small group nor the OFB, I do not believe that any of those on calls over several weeks supported this concern, but Dev and Clair can confirm. Should the ALAC choose to alter this, the document can be quickly revised.