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

[west]

Dear Maryam, All

My suggestion is, if she then approved by ITU to be the main opening 
spejaer, I could meet her (we are both in Tehran) and share your views, 
comments for opening speech. This requires a series of points and comments 
prepared by you to be shared with her. If so, my suggestion is that all 
caucuses and groups provide  short  bullet points that they believe it would 
be good to be reflected in her speech, and just ask her to accommodate them 
in her speech, if she agrees to.

Regards
Amir


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb at bertola.eu.org>
To: <plenary at wsis-cs.org>
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Shirin Ebadi Nomination - Deadline for 
supports


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> _______________________________________
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> 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...
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