Dear Jonathan,
Thank you very much for the background
information to Council’s request that the SCI consider the matter of
resubmitting motions. By way of this email, I am forwarding it on to the SCI
members for their review.
The Committee will begin to address this
tomorrow on our call.
Kind regards,
RA
Ronald N. Andruff
President
RNA Partners, Inc.
220
+ 1 212 481 2820 ext. 10
From: Jonathan
Robinson [mailto:jonathan.robinson@ipracon.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013
4:58 AM
To: 'Ron Andruff'
Cc: 'Neuman, Jeff'
Subject: RE:
[gnso-improvem-impl-sc] New task
Dear Ron,
Certainly. I
believe that the issue can be summarised as follows:
1.
The motion in question related to the provision of temporary
protection for certain Olympic Committee and Red Cross related terms.
2.
The Council voted on the motion and two councillors (from the
IPC) initially abstained from voting.
3.
Due to council procedures, an abstention has the effect of
voting against a motion.
4.
When reminded (by the chair, myself) of the consequence of
abstaining, one councillor asked to change his vote to support the motion and
one councillor retained his abstention.
5.
The votes were then tallied and the matter was closed with the
motion narrowly defeated. However, had the one remaining IPC councillor
not abstained, the motion would have narrowly passed.
6.
Generally, a councillor who abstains is asked to provide a
reason (by way of explanation) for his/her abstention.
7.
In this case, the reason for the remaining IPC Councillor
abstention was a perceived conflict of interest relating to the content of the
motion.
8.
In fact, Council rules cover for this situation and the
abstention was not strictly necessary. This position was formally
clarified later in the meeting and the remaining abstaining councillor asked to
change his vote to support he motion . But, by this time the matter had
been formally closed and some councillors had left the meeting.
The net effect of
all of the above was that, had councillors properly understood the GNSO
Operating Procedures, the outcome of the vote would almost certainly have been
different and the motion would have passed.
Assuming that the
ultimate desired outcome was for Councillors to vote as they were permitted to
(and possibly directed to by their group), two remedies were possible.
A.
Re-open the motion in the same meeting OR
B.
Consider the same motion at a future meeting.
In the event A above
was not an option because it was procedurally questionable and all councillors
were no longer present.
Therefore the motion
was resubmitted for consideration at the following meeting. This was to
the concern of some who questioned the resubmission of a (failed) motion in
exactly the same form.
The question (as
framed by Jeff) therefore arose i.e.
“Should there be any restrictions on
resubmitting motions that previously appeared before the Council? If so,
what should those restrictions be and are there any exceptions?
I trust that this is
helpful to you and your colleagues on the SCI.
Jeff, please
contribute as you see fit.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
From: Ron Andruff
[mailto:randruff@rnapartners.com]
Sent: 07 January 2013 21:41
To: 'Jonathan Robinson'
Cc: 'Neuman, Jeff'
Subject: RE:
[gnso-improvem-impl-sc] New task
Dear Jonathan,
Regarding my email below, we will be
discussing this matter on our Wednesday call this week. If you have a
chance to provide the background requested so that I can circulate that info
prior that would be great; otherwise you can send it on later so that we can
bring it back on to our agenda for next call. Please advise.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
RA
Ronald N. Andruff
President
RNA Partners, Inc.
220
+ 1 212 481 2820 ext. 10
From: Ron Andruff [mailto:randruff@rnapartners.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013
12:20 PM
To: 'Jonathan Robinson';
'gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org'
Cc: 'Neuman, Jeff'
Subject: RE:
[gnso-improvem-impl-sc] New task
Dear all,
First, allow me to wish everyone a
healthy, happy and abundant 2013!
Jonathan/Jeff: Thank you for bringing this
matter to the attention of the SCI. To get all of the SCI members up to
speed on what is being discussed, could you kindly provide us with some
background information vis-à-vis what the specific motion was, and what caused
it to come back to the Council in (as I understand it) virtually the same
wording? That will be helpful for our discussion.
Jeff: By way of this email, I am asking
staff (pursuant to the SCI Charter) to add your email address to the discussion
list until this matter has been fully explored and a recommendation has been
sent back to Council.
Kind regards,
RA
Ronald N. Andruff
RNA Partners, Inc.
From: owner-gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org
[mailto:owner-gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org]
On Behalf Of Jonathan Robinson
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012
5:50 AM
To: KnobenW@telekom.de; gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org
Cc: 'Neuman, Jeff'
Subject: RE: [gnso-improvem-impl-sc]
New task
All,
Jeff Neuman raised a
point on the GNSO Council list that the question being posed to the SCI should
be a simpler one focussed on the general principle not the specific item that
caused us to question the principle. I am in agreement with this.
Therefore my
suggestion is that the SCI focus on the essential question i.e. under what
circumstances is it acceptable / permissible for a motion to be submitted to
the GNSO Council when such a motion is identical to one that has been
previously voted down by the Council.
Jeff put it well and
I am support of his formulation of the question as follows.
The question should simply be "should there be
any restrictions on resubmitting motions that previously appeared before the
Council? If so, what should those restrictions be and are there any
exceptions?
Thank-you.
Jonathan
From: owner-gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org
[mailto:owner-gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org]
On Behalf Of KnobenW@telekom.de
Sent: 20 December 2012 18:08
To: gnso-improvem-impl-sc@icann.org
Subject: [gnso-improvem-impl-sc]
New task
All,
from today's council call the task attached was
shifted to the SCI.
Looking forward to meeting
you later
Wolf-Ulrich