Paulo,
The email that the Affiliations Committee sent to you -- among various
others -- on May 18 read as follows:
Dear members of Wikimedia Portugal,
> The recent developments in your chapter have been brought to our attention
> by a number of members of the chapter, as well as members of the community.
> We are monitoring the situation and in the meantime, would like to request
> all members of the chapter to cease from taking part in this conflict and
> to work to resolve differences. You may also officially request a
> conversation with this committee to discuss a potential mediation plan,
> which we are more than happy to help with. In the case of no interest in
> resolving your differences and moving forward, this committee may consider
> the de-recognition of WMPT, having taken into account also the low activity
> of the group, based on the the reports submitted.
> In addition to this, we request that all communications regarding he
> present situation be routed directly to the AffCom discussion list (
> affcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org) rather than various personal communications
> channels. Please also, refrain from presenting oneself as representative of
> Wikimedia Portugal until this situation is resolved.
Do not hesitate contacting this committee if you have
further questions.
The request concerning "presenting oneself as representative of Wikimedia
Portugal" was in reference to people stating that they were the official
representatives of the chapter in meetings -- a fact of which you were
doubtless well aware, seeing as it was your own complaint on the subject
which prompted the committee's request in the first place.
At no time did you -- or any of your colleagues -- indicate that you were
interpreting the request as having anything to do with the execution of the
legal functions of the board, the filing of financial statements with tax
authorities, or anything of the sort. Rather, you had responded with
questions as to how you might present yourselves to your current and
potential partners.
For you to now insist that the committee's request was a demand that you
violate Portuguese law -- an interpretation that you somehow neglected to
mention to anyone at the time -- is a remarkable and brazen display of bad
faith.
Regards,
Kirill
On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 6:42 PM Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulosperneta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Two illegal requests, to be more precise.
> Last 18 May, the AffCom demanded (by mail)
that the recently elected (15
> April) WMPT board stopped acting as such. However, under the Portuguese
> law, that board, which had been elected in a validated General Assembly,
> was the only valid board of the association, and the one responsible to
> fulfill the Association obligations with the Portuguese state. If they
> doubted that, they should have requested legal advice, instead of taking
> decisions over a subject they clearly did not understood.
> Last 11 June, the AffCom demanded (by
hangout meeting) that a new General
> Assembly must be conveyed by what they called "a neutral party", namely
the
> former head of the table of the General Assembly elected in 2015. That too
> is against the law. Under the Portuguese law, when there is a legally
> elected board in functions, as was the case, it's the board (or the head of
> the table of the General Assembly, in the name of the board) that conveys a
> General Assembly (Article 173º of the Portuguese Civil Code). A General
> Assembly cannot be called by some random person designed at will by some
> external body. If the WMPT had headed the AffCom demands, the recent
> General Assembly of 1 September (realized by AffCom imposition) would have
> been illegal under the country law, being conveyed by a party that had not
> any right to do that.
> Concerning the alleged (by the AffCom) lack
of validity of the 15 April
> General Assembly, it was completely unfounded, as any lawyer knowledgeable
> of the Portuguese law could explain to them. It was with that General
> Assembly (and not with the one of 1 September, which was a mere imposition
> of the AffCom, with almost no practical value) that WMPT submitted its tax
> form (Modelo 22) for the 2017 fiscal year, updated the names of the legal
> representatives of Wikimedia Portugal in the Revenue Services (Autoridade
> Tributária - Tax Authority), as well as regularized the access to the
> association bank account.
> Paulo
> Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> escreveu no dia terça, 25/09/2018 à(s)
22:01:
> > I don't want affiliates to get a
free pass to create problems or neglect
> > their responsibilities such as by failing to produce reports, misusing
> > trademarks, misappropriating funds, etc., and I am glad to see that
> AffCom
> > is taking action when it thinks that there are problems. However, I am
> > concerned that AffCom may currently have some internal issues that should
> > be addressed.
>
> > As far as I know, AffCom hasn't
shared its explanations for some of these
> > actions in public, which places limits on the public's ability to
> evaluate
> > AffCom's choices, but the actions being described in this thread give me
> > cause for concern. Included in those concerns is the claim that AffCom
> made
> > an illegal request of an affiliate. I would expect AffCom to do legal
> > research (probably done by WMF Legal on Affcom's behalf) before making
> > requests. I would also expect that the WMF Board would ensure that AffCom
> > has access to any support that it needs, such as staff time from WMF
> Legal.
>
> > Regarding whether a public warning
letter from Affcom could lead to the
> end
> > of an affiliate, I can understand how a warning letter could concern
> > potential partner organizations, but given our choice of problems I think
> > that this is the lesser problem. I think that Affcom's actions, good and
> > bad, should be public in almost every case. If AffCom makes an error in
> > sending a warning letter, then hopefully the affiliate can explain the
> > situation to the partner organization. If a partner decides to
> discontinue
> > a relationship, that may be regrettable (especially if the warning letter
> > was erroneous) but hopefully the loss of a partnership would be a
> temporary
> > setback from which the affiliate can recover.
>
> > I think that expecting perfection from
anyone, whether AffCom or an
> > affiliate, would be expecting too much. Hopefully organizations and
> people
> > can be "net positives" and can be engaged in continuous learning and
> > continuous self-improvement.
>
> > One theme that is common to AffCom and
affiliate boards is that they are
> > primarily composed of people who are volunteering their time. My
> impression
> > is that this often correlates with a mixed level of quality and
> dedication
> > from the participants. Improving the quality of governance in general is
> an
> > interest of mine, and I would be interested to hear others' thoughts
> about
> > how to do that, keeping in mind that many of these people are generously
> > volunteering their limited time.
>
> > Pine
> > (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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