The Greek Head of Delegation is elected amid questions on the legality of the procedure
In the meeting of 2008-02-21 of the Technical Committee 48 of ELOT (the Greek ISO National Body), Sokratis Maanian was elected as Head of the Greek Delegation to the OpenXML Ballot Resolution Meeting, rather than Antonis Christofides, with 8 votes against 6. The vote was secret, despite the protest by Antonis Christofides. In addition, four additional organisations had been appointed committee members without prior notification.
The meeting started at 13:30, and for about two hours technical issues were discussed. Then some representatives said that they need to leave, and the chairman, Mr E. Melagrakis of ELOT, decided to put on vote the issue of whether Sokratis Maanian (representative of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises) or Antonis Christofides (representative of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)) is going to be Head of Delegation at the OpenXML Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva.
Mr E. Melagrakis explained that the rules of procedure do not specify whether the voting should be secret, and asked the Committee members. Antonis Christofides said that he prefers open procedures, and thus open voting. Mr Sokratis Maanian said he prefers secret voting. Mr Christidis (representative of the Federation of Hellenic Information Technology and Communications Enterprises) said that, since some want open voting and some want secret, then secret must be held, because it is a superset. Mr Melagrakis decided that the voting will be secret. Mr Christofides protested, explaining that he represents an organisation, and that it is not possible for a representative of an organisation to vote in secret, since it will then not be possible for the organisation to know what its representative voted. The protest was ignored and secret voting was held, which resulted in appointing Sokratis Maanian as Head of Delegation, with 8 votes against 6.
After the voting, Antonis Christofides asked why the votes were 14 in total, when the organisations appointed in the committee are 12. Mr Melagrakis replied that the organisations appointed are 16. Mr Christofides asked when this was decided, and a discussion ensued, in which the issue was not sufficiently clarified. However, during the discussion, the representative of the Information Society showed the fax he had received, to which was attached the decision 19103/08 of the ELOT administration, dated 1 February 2008, which modifies the composition of the Committee by adding four new organisations: the Ministry of Education, two departments of the Ministry of Economics, and Information Society S.A. The representatives of NTUA had not been informed of this decision.
Mr Christofides, after contacting Prof. Maistros on the telephone (Prof. Maistros is the main representative of NTUA, Mr Christofides being his replacement), asked to add the following text to the minutes of the meeting:
During today's (21/2/2008) meeting of the Technical Committee 48, we found out about the existence of the decision of ELOT with number 19103/08, with which the composition of the Committee changes by adding four organisations. We keep a reservation on the correctness of the procedure, and we request to be given all the documents that have to do with the composition of the Committee and any modification of such composition, from 2007-01-01 to today. Until we see and evaluate said documents, we accept the result of today's meeting with reservation, and we keep the right to appeal.
The last email that had been received by ELOT before the meeting, dated 2008-02-19, presents, in the document body, 11 organisations in the table of receivers (because the 12th had not yet appointed a representative), while the "To:" and "CC:" email fields include, in addition to ELOT employees, representatives of these 11 organisations only.