[lac-discuss-en] Your response to the Member from TTCS - Trinidad & Tobago - Dev Anand Teelucksingh

Carlton Samuels carlton.samuels at gmail.com
Tue Oct 13 18:54:06 UTC 2015


Humberto:
I expect Dev will answer in due course but I am gravely concerned that
instead of admitting error and amend, you have doubled down on methods to
extricate yourself from responsibility of this latest LACRALO debacle.

See https://community.icann.org/x/C5lYAw

In another context and purely about leadership style, this reminds me of
the Pinochet approach to leadership, a style with which you would be
familiar.

First of all, it is demonstrably corrupt when you choose to validate your
action as privileged and link them to the response from ICANN legal staff.
They did NOT offer you a 'legal opinion'. They themselves declare they are
NOT competent to answer the question put to them.

Without access to the question[s] you put to ICANN Legal Staff, the muck of
the evidence from the four (4) motions you're posing allegedly to resolve
my motion tells me they were likely as confused as the ones you placed in
circulation on this list.

First, you may not offer four brand new motions as amendments to one.  That
is corruption under colour of ignorance and clear evidence of violence
against the LACRALO Rules of Procedure, the Rules of Order for democratic
proceedings, reason and democratic governance.

Second, this:
"If the motion of no confidence is reviewed, it can be observed that the
request it is not directed to the President ‘*requesting him to make use of
some power inherent in his office or specifically given him under the rules
of procedure*', but it requests ‘*That the general assembly demonstrate its
lack of confidence in the LACRALO leadership and vote on this motion*’."

This conception is not just dead wrong. And what is on exhibit here seems
to be the notion of ignorance as virtue.

Here we go, again. This will require that you make a mental shift from
thinking in the physical world to thinking in the virtual world. I readily
accept that just as it is the case in policy development, some of us are
better at this than others. I trust you are able to follow.

The first thing that must be understood and accepted is that when a meeting
of LACRALO, virtual or face-to-face, is in session, there is a presiding
officer.

A LACRALO meeting is in session when the Secretariat gives notice. This
meeting was a special meeting and NOT like the monthly teleconference
meeting. It was a general assembly.

Calling for a vote of the entire membership and issuing credentials to ALL
members is your indication that a general assembly of LACRALO is in
session.  In this case, the big difference is that it is not face-to-face
as, for example, the one in Costa Rica. It is a virtual general assembly.

Now let's identify the presiding officer in this virtual general assembly.

Think back now for a little bit on the process of that face-to-face general
assembly in Costa Rica. We hope the light will come hereafter.

Recall the process there. Jose Arce was the presiding officer. You could
literally see him in action. He was there executing the statutory duty of
the Chair of LACRALO, what you like to refer as 'el Presidente'. Those
duties are defined in the RoP.

Switch your mind now to the virtual general assembly. That assembly is
called by the Secretariat. It was called to decide a motion placed before
it by the Secretariat. Once the assembly is called and although you cannot
'see' him, there is a presiding officer in the chair. However that officer
is easily identified. It is the one who asked the question in the motion
that was the basis for calling the assembly.  That is, the question we are
supposed to answer by the vote.

Go back to the message from Staff announcing the vote. You will notice that
one Alberto Soto raised the motion and put the question for the vote.  What
a coincidence this is!  As it happens, one Alberto Soto was returned as
Chair of LACRALO some time ago. Since the term of office has not expired
and this assembly was not informed otherwise, it is reasonable to assume
that same Alberto Soto continues to be Chair of LACARLO.

By virtue of the RoP, that person, one Alberto Soto, has specific duties.
He is the presiding officer at this virtual general assembly.  On top of
his statutory duties as presiding officer, he has the duty of care. One
such duty is to take care to manage the meeting of a democratic
organisation by democratic means.

You refer the United Nations Rules of Procedure but what you seem not to
appreciate either its substance or more importantly, their MEANING in the
democratic context.

Let's now go to the management of a motion in the general assembly under
the very rules you invoked.

The assembly is in session. There is a motion on the floor that was placed
by the Chair of LACRALO and presiding officer. The motion asks a question
for which a vote is going to be used to decide the answer.

Members are given seven (7) clear days before the virtual vote is closed.
Those days may be used to virtually debate the motion.

Under the Rules of Order of the UNGA, a question pertaining the motion
under consideration can be raised on a point of order.You did not get this
concept right. My motion is NOT special.

Motions are classed as procedural or non-procedural. My motion was
procedural.

The point of order in a face-to-face general assembly is just a matter of a
member rising to his or her feet, being recognized by the presiding officer
- meaning the presiding officer literally sees the member with his own two
eyes - the member's right to speak is acknowledged by the presiding officer
and is given the floor to address the assembly.

Switch now to the virtual general assembly.

In this context, we raise a point of order by electronic means, this time,
an email. Given what I know of the tendency to claim ignorance, my email
pointedly started with the term 'this is a Point of Order'.  I also made
sure to state the reason behind my point of order in a motion; it was
directly related to the motion before the assembly THEN, that is the vote
to elect and to seat a LACRALO representative to the ALAC.

My motion detailed that the call for an election was null and void since a
representative in the person of Lance Hinds, the member from DevNet Guyana,
was already selected. I validated my motion to the assembly by informing
the assembly it cannot name another representative when one was already
nominated and selected.

It is procedural and is questioning the procedure by which the motion for
the election was placed before the assembly by the presiding officer.

Any election that claims to elect someone other than Lance Hinds, whose
nomination was pristine and without blight and NEVER refused to this very
moment, is contrary to the rules and, thus, illegal. This action is but
another event in the measure of the corruption in LACRALO. And you sir,
cannot reasonably deny your active collusion.

Under the rules of order in democratic meetings, my point of order must be
processed BEFORE the one put to the assembly by the presiding officer. That
would be his motion calling for the illegal vote.  My point of order
contained a motion seeking a vote of no confidence by virtue of the
incompetence of the leadership for cause. This request was substantiated by
the charges I outlined, the live witness being the illegal vote.

The motion was acknowledged by the presiding officer. And we can only
assume you acted on the instruction of the presiding officer when you asked
for the official translation.

If this is otherwise, here is your chance to declare it. Because if this is
a rogue operation and on top of acting outside the rules, you would have
also undermined the presiding officer in the execution of his duties.

In other words you would have seized the office held by the Chair of
LACRALO and exercised powers that are not yours to exercise. That is to
say, executed a putsch, a coup de etat.

In so doing, you would have violated the LACRALO Rules of Procedure,
admittedly this time without violence, undermined the office of the Chair
of LACRALO and placed the Chair of LACRALO in a position of disrepute.

If this is what happened without protest from the presiding officer, the
Chair of LACRALO could then be reasonably accused of abandoning his post
and contributing to his own disrepute.

In any event, the result is a corrupted organisation, suborned in this
state by corrupt acts.

When the vote is closed and the count is done and unless otherwise stated,
the general assembly ends.

So the attempt to raise four (4) motions as amendments to my single motion
is as Dev pointed out, an attempt to frustrate my single motion. But more
important, a LACRALO general assembly is NOT in permanent session. And
since the general assembly is not perpetual, your response is not only too
late and woefully misplaced. But by definition, a corrupt practice.

Assume you now accept what is a motion and the CONTEXT in which the motion
was raised, we would be compelled to judge this, your behaviour, as
incorrigible.

The charge of corruption is substantiated.

Kindly,
-Carlton Samuels

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================
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