RE: Use of Secret Ballot at CITES COP 11
Dear Sir, Madam,
We read with deep concern the comments published in the Federal Register
(Vol. 64, No. 130/Thursday July 8, 1999/Notices) by both the Office of
Management Authority and the Office of Scientific Authority on the use
of the secret ballot at CITES meetings. Those comments indicated
the United States’ position is that they “be eliminated at CITES meetings
or made more difficult to obtain.” The rationale against use of the
secret ballot, offered by the United States, is that the secret ballot
at COP 10 “precluded meaningful debate on many issues and did not foster
transparency in the decision-making process.”
With all due respect to the author of such remarks, they are neither
logical nor consistent with the United States’ traditional posture as champion
of the civil, human and political rights of its minorities as well as a
global role model for the democratic process in general.
To say the secret ballot “precludes debate” or somehow clouds the “transparency”
of the decision-making process is not logical because any balloting – whether
for a legislative or regulatory measure or elective office – comes at the
end of debate. Each party’s decision should be formed from the evidence
provided during free and open discussion, not influenced by how another
party casts its ballot.
I need not remind any United States government official or student of
history of the limitless examples where individual rights and liberties
have been trampled by those who have no regard for democracy or the basic
rights of all regardless of race, creed or political persuasion. Within
the history of “Jim Crow” laws during a particularly lamentable period
of United States history, the use of such artifices as poll taxes, literacy
tests, ownership of property etc. to deny minorities their right to participate
in the democratic process should be emblazoned in every American heart.
They should serve as reminders that the right to vote without intimidation
or any other encumbering devices is one of the basic freedoms that must
not be denied particularly by those who espouse the precepts of liberty
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Throughout American politics, debate rages, pro and con, over the merits
of would-be elected officials, ballot issues etc. until Election Day. As
each voter approaches his or her polling place, a clear line where debate
ends and the primacy and privacy of the vote begins is established by law.
Beyond that line, the voter presents his or her credentials and enters
a curtained booth to exercise one of the greatest rights of citizenship,
the right to vote. I need not remind anyone that the vote cast is
cast in secret.
Please do not sully the fine and long-deserved reputation of the United
States as the cradle of Liberty with such historically, logically, and
ideologically wrong-headed thinking. Rather than oppose the use of the
Secret Ballot at CITES, the United States should stand before the world
as its most staunch advocate.
With my best regards
Eugene Lapointe
IWMC President
Former Secretary General of CITES (1982-1990) |
