election controversy? - Re: Handover to new PDWG co-chairs[AfriNIC-rpd]

[Andrew Alston]

I've been reading this thread with quite a bit of interest, and
pondering adding my 2 cents.

Firstly, I need to say congratulations to both of the new co-chairs, and
reiterate what seems to be common consensus on this thread, no one has
issues with the eventual outcome, it was the process that seemed to be
flawed.

The way I see it is as follows (taken from the top down, many of the
issues have already been addressed or acknowledged, and hence are kind
of moot points)

a.) There were two seats available, and who candidates, so NomCom chose
not to call a vote and announced the results without an election - A
number of people (including myself) objected to this, irrespective of if
the results were a foregone conclusion or not, a vote still needed to be
called.  The question of what would have happened if the community had
rejected the candidates is probably one that will never be answered, but
it does make for interesting contemplation.

b.) While one candidate indicated a preference for one year, and the
other indicated a two year preference, while it would have been odd for
the community to choose otherwise, again, the option should have been
there.  

c.) When the final vote was put to the floor, only one option was put to
the floor for vote (1 year term for McTim and 2 year term for Paul), I
would argue that to complete the process, there should have been an
alternative vote tabled directly after that, that allowed for a reversal
of the terms.  

The problem here though is in my opinion larger than this isolated event
that highlighted problems in the voting procedures.  It is also about
the impression that the procedures create on the community.  It needs to
be pointed out that the policies created by the PDP can have tremendous
effect on the internet community within Africa, and hence the co-chairs
carry what I consider to be a huge responsibility.  As such the process
by which they are elected and brought into office needs to be 100%
completely above reproach.  When the community proposes, develops and
then gains consensus on a policy, the policies are guided through the
process by the co-chairs, if we have a situation where there is ANY room
to question the election of those co-chairs, we open a huge and rather
nasty can of worms.

I believe that both the issue seen here, and the issues raised later in
the meeting with regards to the corporate governance inside AfriNIC are
things we need to think about, and ensure these issues are resolved and
do not reoccur, as it is critical to have a strong and functional RIR
with policies and procedures that cannot be questioned in front of the
global community.

Just my thoughts

Andrew