[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Ray Saintonge]

On 10/09/11 9:58 AM, Risker wrote:
> On 9 October 2011 12:48, Federico Leva (Nemo)<nemowiki at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Risker, 09/10/2011 18:40:
>>> The primary responsibility of Board members is to the Foundation, not to
>>> the community or the chapters or to any other external agent.
>> I find this response a bit odd. ;-) It almost seems to assume that the
>> community (or Nathan?) is likely wanting to elect someone the WMF
>> couldn't accept, or that "responsibility to the community" is a bad
>> thing, while we used to say only that there's no imperative mandate and
>> that chapters-elected trustees are not chapters representatives, etc.
> I'm not sure what you find odd about it, but it is factual.
>
> The key point is that board members must work on behalf of the Foundation,
> and must not act as representatives of a particular constituency, and those
> constituencies cannot direct board members elected/nominated by them to act
> in certain ways.
>
>
It's not the factuality of the statement that is odd.  The Hong Kong 
style of democracy that insures that the elected members can never form 
a majority is.

In a fully democratic country all elected representatives work on behalf 
of the country, but they still represent particular constituencies 
and/or parties, to which they are accountable.  Without that the entire 
notion of constituencies is a sham. When they fail to represent the 
interests of their constituencies they should be voted out.

Ray