[WSIS CS-Plenary] Shirin Ebadi Nomination - Deadline for supports

[Vittorio Bertola]

KovenRonald at aol.com ha scritto:
> Dear All --
> 
> Everyone of us has his hobbyhorses, favorite essential topics. I think 
> it is really out of bounds for us to ask someone like Shirin Ebadi to 
> reflect them. She must be free to express what she thinks is important. 
> The authoritarian atmosphere of our limited version of "civil 
> society,"defining what is sayable and not sayable is getting truly 
> suffocating. It's time -- past time -- for us to tell people that they 
> are free to say what they think and decide for themselves what they 
> consider important.

I think you are starting from a good point but getting to wrong conclusions.

I agree that we should not ask Ms. Ebadi to make her speech a collection 
of each group's pet issues; I actually said the same just a few days ago 
on a similar matter, when specific groups would require mention of their 
specific issues into a generic text. Moreover, you definitely can't 
treat such a high level person as if she were our spokesperson, hired to 
read someone else's speech.

At the same time, people and organizations here have been spending four 
years of their lives pushing some specific issues and proposals, and the 
opening speech of the final Summit is an important chance to increase 
such push. Chances of success for civil society campaigns are directly 
related to the amount of coordination, unity and constant visibility 
that is given to our proposals. Thus it would be a disaster if Ms. 
Ebadi, in her autonomy, missed some vital points or even spoke against 
them - maybe just because we didn't have a chance to brief her on what 
has been going on in this process.

The same applies to the other speakers, who - remember - are not there 
in their personal capacity, but speaking on behalf of the entire set of 
civil society participants. I wouldn't feel comfortable in hearing any 
of them, say, praising President Ben Ali for his benevolent attitudes to 
his people or taking stances that go against our own declaration of 
principles agreed in Geneva.

I think that if we all are reasonable, we can find ways to preserve the 
delicate balance between the independent thoughts of an individual and 
his/her role as a representative of a much broader movement. For 
example, we might schedule briefing sessions in which they listen to 
everyone and present what they plan to say. We might ask them to post 
drafts of their speeches for public comment, some days in advance. We 
might map them to topics and ask them to subscribe to relevant caucuses 
to discuss the intervention in the next couple of weeks.

I don't think these are unreasonable requests, nor attempts to "define 
what is sayable or not sayable" or censor our own speakers. But if we 
end up with 10 or 15 people going up to the lectern and saying just the 
first thing that came up in their minds, without any kind of 
coordination among themselves or with past activities, we will have 
missed a huge opportunity and done quite a bad job.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...