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Kenya Changes From Yes to Abstain! Denmark Says No; EU Commission Investigating Poland - Updated 5Xs - Mexico

By Pamela Jones et al.

I'm hearing now that Kenya has changed its vote from Yes to Abstain! Kenya is a P-Member. There's also an unconfirmed report that the committee in Denmark has asked Denmark Standards to vote No, after the considerable pressure to change the vote to yes reportedly failed.

And more news from troubled Poland, with news that the EU Commission is investigating the process in that country. Things have reportedly gone from bad to worse there, with threats of lawsuits in the air if folks talk publicly about what is happening.

We also find out that the infamous slide the Brazilian delegate told us about, the one with the misleading "98% of issues resolved" number, showed up in Poland, shown by the chairperson, and it turns out it was apparently created by an employee of Microsoft Nederland. Worse, a letter from Tomasz Schweitzer, president of PKN, that was sent to the chairperson and which she was supposed to send to all the members prior to the meeting to vote, advising them to vote to Abstain if no consensus was possible, wasn't distributed after all, so the sender finally put it on the internet to try to reach everyone. An IBM representative is reported to have accused the chairperson of deliberate manipulation of the process at the meeting that failed to reach consensus. Remember the chair chose to allow voting by email when no consensus was reached? It seems that she failed to mention that if missing members didn't send in a vote by email, she'd count it as a Yes vote, since the rules allow that. But if they don't know because they were not informed, might some not realize that any failure to vote by email will tilt that way? So, delegates in Poland: are you voting? Please do. All this being reported by a very brave Borys Musielak of PolishLinux.org.

Full post as published by Groklaw on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).