Dear all,
I attended the .mu Multi-Stakeholder Forum today, along with S.
Moonesamy (SM). Other MIU members who were present are:
- Benoit Gentil
- Loganaden Velvindron
SM & I represented the Mauritius Internet Users in the multi-stakeholder
forum.
First, I would like to share with you that we have been requested to ask
members of MIU to restrain from sending emails directly to officers, as
it is unpleasant. I hereby request you to discuss matters pertaining to
.mu on the mailing list itself. SM and I would do the necessary to
compile your comments & share the same on the Multi-Stakeholder forum. I
understand that you want your voices heard in this matter but please
bear with bureaucracy.
If still you are contacting officers, please do so individually and not
as representatives of MIU. You will need a consensus to represent MIU on
such matters.
It has also been communicated to us not to make the document containing
"notes of meetings" public but rather only discuss the points mentioned
among members. Once the minutes of meetings are approved, they can be
then circulated.
While approval was asked for the previous notes of meeting, SM objected
to points[1] communicated earlier by email. He raised objection on words
he didn't mention, which were written in the notes of the meeting. There
was some scuffling among attendees. The 'wrong wordings' was being
tossed as a minor issue. The Chairperson agreed to replace the words
".mu Council" throughout the rest of the notes. SM did not raise other
points that were enumerated in his earlier email.
As set in the agenda, there was a presentation about a draft model of an
association. The base template used is that of the Mauritius Chamber of
Commerce and Industry. The draft was sectioned into parts like the type
of association it would be, a section for membership, a section for the
management committee (MC) and its powers, etc. It was said the draft
will be sent to attendees of the meeting afterwards.
Once the presentation was over, I raised to confirm if we may call this
a "draft" as it did not contain constituents on how the .mu ccTLD will
be managed. It was confirmed that the document presented was only a
template to move forward and its content will be discussed & approved
accordingly. The Chair invited attendees for their contribution & said
that would be the way forward.
There was a discussion on membership and it was agreed & confirmed by
the Chair that membership will be open. That is, anyone with an interest
in internet will be able to apply.
There was a second discussion about electing the MC. A proposal came
that there should be reserved quotas for each group, industry,
government, professionals/individuals etc.
I objected to that & proposed a fair election for the MC whereby every
individual regardless of his/her affiliation could be a candidate &
present his/her vision/work/contribution to the .mu ccTLD. There was a
comment that if we have an MC comprising of 20 members we might end up
having associations being not represented at all. SM clarified the doubt
saying there could be a rule that no two people from the same group
would be selected on the MC. The person with the higher number of votes
will earn the seat.
SM & I argued this proposal ensured that people will earn their seat
based on contribution to the .mu ccTLD and gaining votes for the same.
Whereas with a 'reserved quota' model we might have several people with
strong contributions left out because others who contributed less were
given seats.
I used an example from Nominet[2] and mentioned;
Anyone with an interest in the internet may become a member of the
association. Members would be subject to the Members’ Code and
contribute to the running of the association by:
- Exercising voting rights at Annual General Meetings, either by
attending in person or by proxy
- Electing non-executive directors to the Board
- Attending events and meetings
I refrained from using the word Nominet (though I spelled it on two
occasions) to avoid ambiguity as the latter is a company while we
proposed an association.
The example I used did not contain "reserved seats" for groups or
individuals.
There was a comment that the above could have the MC filled with people
from the same group based on 'canvassing' (word in the local context). I
felt that was a typical Mauritian comment (with allusion to the fear of
corruptly earned seats) while I was rather proposing that people earn
the seats with real contributions to .mu ccTLD. I did not have a proper
example of how I could convince people to vote me while fellow members
would be contributing more than me. So, I did not argue further.
However, I did gave an example using the Mauritius Bankers Association
(MBA) whereby I mentioned we could have some people who are strongly
contributing not earning seats because people from the MBA who have
contributed less to the .mu ccTLD actually earned seats based on
reserved quota. I nodded at the representative of MBA signifying it is
just for example sake.
[1]
http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2015/05/1336.html
Regards,
--
Ish Sookun
- Geek by birth, Linux by choice.
- I blog at HACKLOG.in.
https://twitter.com/IshSookun ^^ Do you tweet?
Received on Fri Jun 12 2015 - 14:48:46 PST