Dear Carlos Vera: I hope I'm not being misled by my poor Spanish language skills. If this is the case, my humble apologies. But from my translation of your original input, it seems that while you acknowledged the short time allowed for a quorate vote, you concluded that any election from the vote remains valid. With respect, we will agree to disagree. And on principle. I've seen several of our colleagues who say they wished to vote and for one or other reason, were disenfranchised. In my part of the world where the democratic tradition is deep-rooted, a valid election is one that allows all those qualified and wishing to vote to do so without imposition of duress of any kind. Closing a poll early is a well-know practice used to disenfranchise voters. So long as I caucus with LACRALO, I will be opposed and we must have none of that. More fundamentally, the evidence abounds that the broad LACRALO membership remains puzzled by elements of our democratic governance and this is of grave concern to me. We lack a common understanding of democratic governance, the meaning of representation in this context and why we elect representatives to purpose. It is even more challenging when the virtual world interposes itself on us. I confess that despite powerful and insistent arguments at Buenos Aires in the beginning of LACRALO, I was against any mechanism that protected and preserved the Caribbean's distinct cultural antecedents and rights to effective representation. I am humbled by the history, including recent history, and now admit I was wrong then and thereby connived at error. I am now convinced that the differences between Caribbean views on democracy, governance and representation is too wide a gulf to bridge and thus renders LACRALO dysfunctional and inimical to our interests. There must be a new arrangement for continued worthwhile engagement. Carlton Samuels