[AfriNIC-rpd] NomCom at AFRINIC-16

[Adiel Akplogan]

Dear all,

At this point, let me try to bring clarity to this discussion and suggest the summary (and some clarifications) below. I see the following issues that need to be dealt with (from the past days discussions):

a) How do we handle the situation where we have the same number of candidate than the number of seat to fill? 

a.1) For Board election I think this has been addressed in [Section 8] of the election process where it says "The ballot paper shall provide an option not to select any of the eligible candidates." - The famous "None of the above" option. This means in any case a vote should take place. If "None of the above" win, then we consider that members have rejected the candidate(s) and in such case Article [11.7] of the current bylaws should be used. Now if the Director already in office doesn't want to continue serving on board, then I guess the Board should take this back to the community ... I guess through another round of election process that will start after the face to face meeting (keeping the unfilled seat vacant until the next election).

a.2) for the PDP-WG co-chairs selection, there is no provision for such a case. We need to address that and the question I have for you is: why not use the same mechanism? And if there is a situation that the process doesn't cover, request the PDP-WG to select co-chair(s) from the floor as interim measure while reopening the Open selection process till an election actually take place. 

a.3) For NRO-NC/ASO-AC AFRINIC region's representatives selection, I guess the process should be very similar to a.2 with maybe an additional power for the board to appoint the interim representative(s).

b) Number of Proxies:  This debate is not new and has raised many questions in 2008 and 2009. Even some of the RIR representatives at these meetings wrote to the Board to complain about the perception that was given during our elections (Which I agree is understandable). The fact is that, as Candidate if you have a proxy, it is clear to all for who you are going to vote. So if a candidate manage to collect (by all means) sufficient proxies for himself, he will publicly vote himself onto the Board (it is to note that Proxy form does not mention who the member appointing the proxy prefer to vote for). That in fact, somehow defeat the whole purpose of secret ballot as everybody can easily deduct the result of the vote. I must add that, at the time of the past discussion, there was limited participation and for instance over 30 votes, one candidate carries 17 Proxies.  After a long discussion on the Board it was agreed that, while this is not against any rule, it may give a wrong perception to the election process. So as from last year the process has been changed to limit the number of proxy that a candidate can carry to only ONE. This also prevent candidates to lobby for proxies ... which can be seen different from lobbying for votes and participation by members directly. Imagine an improbable situation (due to the scale of national election) where in a presidential or even local election, a candidate managed to convince let say even 30% of the voters to be sick the day of the election and ask them to allow him alone to vote for all of them by procuration. Yes it may be allowed by the law but many will find it potentially unfair. 

I would like to point out that In the new bylaws proposal, we went a bit further to even limit the number of proxies that a member can carry to 5. All this has also to be read in the spirit of the use of an e-voting platform. I don't however think that we can completely get ride of Proxies.

c) Lobbying for member vote. I see not harm in that if done properly. Election is about campaign and anyone should be allowed to campaign based on his achievement and program. I even see that as a way of attracting members attention to the process and be interested to participate. We should not spend ages in debating that. The real question lies on Proxies I guess. As this election is reserved for only members, one option is to use the existing closed member only discussion mailing list (members-discuss at afrinic.net - very quite nowadays) for pre-voting debate and campaign(?). 

d) Sub-Regional election vs. Regional. It is important for us to remind ourself that Board members are elected from a region to serve the whole Africa region on the Board. They are not elected to serve their region but the Registry which serve the whole region. That is why their legitimacy is determined by all the members' vote. AFRINC aimed at showing a united region (united by technology) we should resist in failing into regionalism. We have suffered so much in this region from division that we should fight all kind of division by all means.

e) I would really like to encourage you all to contribute to the Bylaws, the Board and PDPWG Co-chairs Election Processes comment period and provide your view and suggestions so that many of these issues are fixed in a common agreement.

Thanks and I'm very happy to see these discussions happening here ... keep participating, keep contributing. Do not hesitate to read the archive of the list and the one of the announce at afrinic.net (previous afrinic-discuss) mailing list. 

- a.