On Saturday, November 29, 2014 11:26:00 AM UTC-6, la selpa'i ku wrote:
What I don't understand is why, after achieving such a high consensus,
we still cannot seem to call the question of existential import settled.
Is this not a democratic institution/committee?
BPFK is bound by
the Baseline Policy of 2002, from which it draws its charter, to pursue near-consensus when considering changes to "baseline documents":
Changes must be approved by consensus, with specific procedures to determine consensus decided by the byfy subject to Board of Directors review. In general, a single objector shall not be presumed to deny consensus.
There's been a tradition of interpreting this as "consensus-minus-one". There is little guidance on the determination of who is counted towards/against consensus. The committee is bound to respect a notion of "open membership", which seems to extend to anyone who participates in committee activity. The Policy explicitly says that the chair of BPFK must seek approval of the Directors if the chair wishes to determine membership in some other fashion.
the byfy should NOT be considering any proposals for changes to the baseline documents (which fall under the final task) UNTIL it has finished the primary, secondary, and tertiary tasks.
This interpretation does not seem to have been consistently enforced since that time, but the Policy from which the intepretation was derived has not been amended.
To return to the question of how to settle an issue like the one at hand: It appears to me that the only way to record a decision like this is for the chair to declare the matter decided. The declaration would, according to the Policy, be open to recall by the Directors on questions of consensus. The Directors or the President might also challenge a decision on the basis of other restrictions imposed by the Baseline Policy, such as the order of committee business.
Is it any wonder that, given the extent to which the authority of BPFK has been undermined, both pre-emptively and after the fact, the chair might be reluctant to make such declarations?
I submit that the current arrangement has long failed to achieve the objectives it was explicitly intended to forward, that it is no longer consonant with the will of the lojban-using community, and that it is time to consider another way forward. To that end, I hope that when baseline policy is raised at the annual meeting of LLG (currently in session), that members of this committee as well as the general body, will consider a measure to provide BPFK with a new charter.
mi'e la mukti mu'o