RE: [ICANN-EU] [Q&A] the exciting adventures of a nominee

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 17:32 11/09/00 +0200, Andrew McLaughlin wrote:
>Joop:
>
>There's no mistake.  You are a resident of Asia/Pacific.  Voting is defined
>by residency.  Therefore you fall within Asia/Pacific for purposes of
>voting.  Candidacy is defined by citizenship.  Therefore, you fall within
>Europe for purposes of candidacy.
>
>This cannot be news to you -- this structure has been discussed and debated
>since the very first ICANN meeting in Singapore.  You should review the
>various multimedia meeting archives, where you will find lots of discussion
>of this odd structure.  The Bylaws, representing an essential element of the
>underlying ICANN compromises from 1998, required that at least one Director
>be a citizen of each geographic region.  Citizenship is the test for
>Directors, therefore citizenship must be the test for candidates & nominees.
>However, ICANN does not have the capacity (with our one At Large staff
>person) to verify citizenship of individual At Large members.  Therefore,
>the mailing address used for the PIN letters provides the basis for regional
>assignment of members.
>
>Is that a clear explanation?
>

Andrew, 
The explanation is clear and, yes, I have been aware of the Citizenship
requirement for Directors for a long time.
The fact that I am now apparently wrong in concluding that support for
regionally (citizenship based) assigned directors must come from regionally
assigned (citizenship based) members only demonstrates how odd the rules are. 
I have protested these rules on the grounds that they make it effectively
impossible for an expat to run for Director. 

I am now protesting the Q&A infrastructure and its lack of flexibility,
because they make it impossible for an expat to participate in web-based
debate in the region where (s)he might want to campaign later as director.

Why don't  you allow the @large participants to ask *any* candidate questions?

Apart from the expat issue, the Asia/Pacific region also shows another
deficiency.
Australia, New Zealand and some other countries  are clearly "orphaned" in
this region.
China, Japan and Korea dominate this region. There is barely any
communication between Aus/NZ members and the @large candidates.
There is no chance that Aus/NZ will ever get the numbers to get their own
candidate in.
Culturally we belong to Europe, even though economically we are part of
Asia.  We understand each other's arguments.
(This is also why I joined the EU forum).

You will see increased tension and frustration arising about this
artificial ICANN division of the world. 
Inflexibility of your interface will only aggravate it.



--Joop Teernstra LL.M.--  
the Cyberspace Association and 
the constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners
http://www.idno.org