It is my personal view that the Civil Society (CS) process for nomination of speakers names for the summit as developed at PC 3, is - well, a farce.
The developed a criteria, one that it left ngos less than a week to consult, one that only allowed those who had ONLY been already been involved and/or attended the wsis process to participate is unacceptable. Furthermore, the selection committee hastily created has - no - clue about who in fact would be a visionary, high level speaker (meaning only head of organizations need apply).
At phase one CS was given well over a month to consult to its constituencies. However this time, this was not possible. This is not due to the ITU, which in fact DID notify the civil society bureau (CSB) through CONGO about the need to consult and submit names by the first week in Oct. Despite recieving generous funds (well over 150,000 CHF) to help co-ordinate CS @ wsis , CONGO for some reason dropped the ball and did not start the process well in advance. In fact, the issue was not raised until late in the first week of the prepcom.
Leaving such a key and important issue almost until the end seriously compromises the ability of CS to find high level names to speak at the very key summit events. For me this lack of leadership is , completely, unacceptable.
Three things to note :
1. NO funding of any kind is available for potential speakers to travel to, and attend the wsis summit (if they are selected)
2. As was the case in the Geneva phase, it is the ITU that has the ultimate decision on the selection. Thus, the process has always allowed for Individuals and/or organizations to contact and submit names to the ITU
3. Again, as i mentioned earlier - the selection criteria and process as developed at the prepcom is not one I support. I have protested quite vocally against its process, specifically only favouring an elite few who have had the chance to attend an existing official WSIS prepcom event.
Serious incidents have already arisen due to the lack of an open and clear process. For example, on Friday hours before the 2nd plenary session the gender caucus had to deal with the issue of Saida "nomination" as an an "excellent" personal to speak on behalf of the gender caucus at the summit. Magaly Pazello, the meeting chair refused. She reminded the attendees that a process had to be followed first. After the meeting, Saida and agents basically swarmed and intimidated Magaly outside the serpentine bar. Luckily the swarming was witnessed by several (non-tunisian) government delegates.
One has to ask the question, will well known Tunisian agents be recommended as speakers at the summit ? If so, will we be OK with them speaking on the behalf of Civil Society ? Well, we have to deal with the issue...
I have transmitted my concern and serious reservations about the last minute process that has been developed on this issue to the Canadian govt officials involved in the WSIS.
In the meantime, i would recommend the process be re-opened, allowing for suggestions of persons that might be good speakers to be further elaborated and developed in line with the comments sent by Michael Gurstein and others.