Accountability of the elected officials.

1Introduction

The issue of the accountability of the elected officials has been discussed at various Plenipotentiary Conferences and divergence views were expressed in this regard. Based on the approach taken for their election or their appointment several other issues and questions will be raised which are further described under paragraph 2 below:

2Discussion

2.1The above issue is directly relateds to the Structure and the functioning of the Union.The answer to this question lies in the way the Union to beshould function and what type of structure the Union is based upon.

2.2In a full Federative Structure and full Federative functioning approach, the Secretary General,and the three Directors of the Bureaux areshould to be fully responsible and accountable to the Union, the Plenipotentiary Conference and the Council.

2.3In a full Pyramid structure and full Pyramid functioning approach, in which the Directors of the three Bureaux are appointed by the Council,only the Secretary General is responsible and accountable to the Union,the Plenipotentiary Conference and the Council. and tThe Directors of the three Bureaux,appointed by the Council,are fully responsible and accountable to the Secretary General.

2.3In the case mentioned in paragraph 2.3, the following question arises:

2.3.1Are the appointed Directors accountable/ responsible to their respective assemblies /conferences?

2.3.2Or since they are not accountable to the Council they are not also accountable to their respective assemblies /conferences.

2.4Another question would be :

2.4.1IsSthe Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau who is not accountable to the Council in a full Pyramid approach when he or she is appointed by the Council would he or she be accountable to the World Radiocommunication and Regional Radiocommunication Conferences which are treaty making entities, if not who will be accountable to these two entities?

2.5In a mixture of federative structure and pyramid or quasi pyramid functioning (almost similar to the situation of today) what are is the scope of the accountability of the Directors of the Bureaux?

2.6Paragraph 11 of Document CO 8/ 48 and [CO 9/44] in addressing the issue of accountability of the elected officials while in its title refers to “Role, accountability of elected officials”however, neither the Role nor the accountability of the elected officials have been addressed in the document. On the other hand, proposals EUR/12/15-45, ARB/14/45, USA/16/35, RCC/29/5, AFCP/34/4to PP-06 contains elements which could be examined and further processed in this regard.

2.7As an example, with respect to the accountability of the Directors of the Bureaux, several proposals among those referred to above /submitted to PP-06, clearly proposed that the Directors of the Bureaux shall be accountable to the Council (an entity which acts on behalf of the Plenipotentiary Conference in the interval between the meetings of the Plenipotentiary Conference).These proposals were based on the fact that, the current structure of the Union is based on a federative scheme and if the objectives of such a federative scheme should be fully observed ,the Directors of the Bureaux shall be responsible to the Union ,the highest organ of it is the Plenipotentiary and in the interval between that is the Council.There are other examples.

2.8However, other Member States at Plenipotentiary Conference Antalya 2006, on the contrary, supported no change to the current situation” . In fact the current situation, apart from the Secretary General, does not explicitly refers to the accountability of other elected officials.

2.9In view of the above, since the current federative structure and pyramid or quasi pyramid functioning (almost similar to the situation of today) has not caused any difficulty nor resulted in any deficiency and,therefore seems to work efficiently,thereit should be retained as it functions today.

2.10Consequently there is no need to amend the ITU Constitution and the Convention