[WSIS CS-Plenary] [governance] Post mortem and next steps on IG

[Vittorio Bertola]

William Drake ha scritto:

>1. As everyone probably knows by now, there will be an Intersessional
>"open-ended" negotiation group to negotiate the chapters on Implementation
>(Chapter 1), Financial Mechanisms (Chapter 2) and Follow-up (Chapter 4),
>and to finalize the political part of the document. "Open ended" in this
>context means all governments can participate.  If I heard correctly,
>civil society and the private sector are out in the cold, although
>Karklins said there'd be regular reporting out.  Woop de doo.  WSIS
>multistakeholderism revealed.
>  
>
I think we have to push very hard on this, and at the same time give to 
the friendly governmental people (including Karklins, I think) some room 
to make some practical advancements.

For example: why don't we formally put together a "civil society 
delegation", composed by a few people (3-5) entrusted by this Plenary, 
and send a letter to Karklins saying that we would like such delegation 
to be formally included in the open ended negotiations? After all, the 
EU openly supported our participation in the plenary, and I think that, 
while asking to move these consultations to the resumed session of the 
PrepCom or to any excessively open environment would not fly, the 
request to have one more seat for civil society (and one for private 
sector of course), to be added to the 150+ seats of the governments, 
could be more reasonable and more supportable by Western governments. 
And we can do this together with the private sector.

>2.  Chapter 3 on IG will be taken up in a resumed crisis session of the
>PrepCom in Tunis just prior to the summit.  I'm not clear on what the
>modalities of participation will be, if someone else here is please
>inform, but would presume it'd be the same wonderful conditions we got at
>PC-3.
>  
>
I assume so.

I am pissed up by the fact that our contributions are not included in 
the compilation of proposals. I am wondering whether we should not 
produce (in a few days!) our version of section 5, i.e. actual language, 
and submit it to Khan and Karklins, asking for it to be included in the 
proposals transmitted to the resumed session. At least, we could reuse 
that language for the (now apparently likely) CS declaration :-)

In any case, I personally think that we must knock harder and harder at 
all closed doors, and not lose any opportunity to do so.

>4.  In its press office spin, below, the ITU characterizes the situation
>on oversight as a "breakthrough."  To put it mildly, this is not obvious.
>It is true that the EU finally put its cards on the table 
>
The US as well. Actually, the real advancement of the PrepCom is that 
now almost all cards are on the table.

>and allowed its
>position to be folded together with the Like Minded Group, and
>specifically endorsed Khan distributing his Food for Thought doc and
>having it forwarded alongside others to Tunis.
>
Well, no, in the discussion the EU said "do as you like, we only have a 
moderate preference for you to release the paper". It was a mild and 
cautious endorsement, not as if the EU was a strong supporter of this.

>  But the story obviously
>does not end there.  As the EU president of the moment and chair of the EU
>discussions, the UK rep presumably was not really free to press his
>government's views in their meetings.  There could now be some push back.
>I'm a little puzzled by the stances of some of the other European
>governments that generally lean more toward more neoliberalism and/or
>currying favor with the US, and wonder whether they might not join in if
>the UK moves.  
>
Of course, I can't tell you about the internal dynamics of the EU, but 
it is definitely surprising that the representatives of some governments 
that generally have a pro-deregulation and even pro-US foreign policy 
were among the strongest supporters of not moving towards the US. This 
might be due to the fact that not all EU countries had Foreign Ministry 
officers participating in the discussion - actually many of them have 
delegations composed of relatively technical people. So if the level of 
the clash rises, the position of these countries might change. After 
all, I guess that's also the purpose of the people getting articles 
published in prominent positions on the IHT and the NYT: trying to get 
these people confronted with phone calls from the capitals on the line 
of "I just read the IHT, what the hell are we doing there?"

>And certainly they will all be hearing from Washington.
>(BTW it's pretty surprising to see the David Gross telling the press that
>the EU position was a bolt out of the blue; if we knew were they were
>heading, how could he have not?  Can it really be that there was no prior
>consultation, as has been claimed, or is this just disingenuous playing to
>the US domestic political scene?)  
>
The EU position was ultimately agreed just a few minutes before being 
handed out at the meeting. You might consider it incredible that the 
council of people who have been following the process for the EU member 
states for months, while knowing well that governmental oversight was 
the core issue and the most divisive one, did not manage to discuss it 
and agree on a position until Wednesday afternoon, but... welcome to Europe.

>So one would guess that the EU stance
>is still in flux, the coalition could soften, and the alignment with the
>LMG could be more apparent than real.
>
No, well, observing carefully the situation from the outside, there 
clearly are two different possible strategies: one sees Europe as the 
left-wing end (i.e., pro moderate change) of the coalition of Western 
countries plus most Latin Americans and Africans, aimed at determining a 
progressive evolution of the present IG system, and the other sees 
Europe as the leader of a coalition including the LMG and most of the 
Third World, and aimed at isolating the US in a high level Summit of 
Heads of State, using IG and the orderly evolution of the Internet as a 
sacrificable tool to that political objective. Which will prevail, if 
any... it is totally unclear to me. I'd say that no one knows yet.

>5.  Whatever happens in the intergovernmental haggling over the next six
>weeks (which will be offline and utterly non-transparent), it would be
>useful if the caucus could come to a shared view and issue a declaration
>in advance of Tunis.
>
As I support, I think we should have our own language ready for section 
5, as soon as possible.

-- 
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