Bret Fausett wrote:
* Create two new ALAC positions, appointed by the Nominating Committee, both from Asia, to reflect that region's increased proportion of global Internet users
I understand the thinking here, but I can see some downside to "proportional representation," either by absolute population or population of Internet users.
I'm curious to know peoples' feelings about the other side of this, in that they have chosen to bring these new ALAC members in through the NomComm rather than elected by RALOs. This recommendation, should it be accepted, further increases the proportion of ALAC members who are appointed rather than elected, which IMO reduces accountability and reverses the move of ALAC from a bunch of internally selected - experts to a true grassroots movement. Am I the only one bothered by this?
First, are you going to take away a representative from Africa under the same theory?
They were not only looking at raw numbers, but also potential for growth. So Africa is still seen as high numbers, even if most of that is _potential_ rather than current.
Second, even within a region, the ALAC representatives aren't distributed in accord with the population. If you have proportional representation across the five regions, don't you then have to do it within the regions? If the point of increasing the AP ALAC members is to reflect the population, doesn't same principle dictate that of the five proposed Asia-Pacific representatives, China always have at least three and India at least one? I see no real way of making this work in a manner that reflects the population. Five ALAC representatives from English-speaking Australia and New Zealand wouldn't really address the problems the Review Committee is trying to solve.
Then there are the Asean countries, which would get totally squeezed out between the natural gravitation of the English-speaking countries (plus Japan) and the high populations of India and China. I suppose this is why they put their faith in the NomComm to keep the situation geographically balanced rather than keep it to democratic numbers games alone. Still, there must be a better way to do this.
Finally, has there been a complaint that some needs are being unmet by the current representatives? What are those complaints? If there are none, perhaps we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Good point. Maybe the other regions have privately expressed dissatisfation with those aggressive North Americans and want to give a bigger (if not louder) voice elsewhere. Unfortunately (at least from my perspective) if it hadn't been for NARALO then ALAC would have completely bowed down to other interests on issues such as tasting, so I don't see how this will have a positive effect on ALAC's ability to fulfil its mandate. There are voices here who say ALAC was too compromising on tasting even _with_ the pressure from NARALO to get rid of the AGP. Imagine what the position would have been had the voice of NARALO been further diminished. - Evan