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In September 2023 FIG announced the call for nominations for
two Vice President positions and Chairs Elects for the 10 FIG
commissions with a deadline of Thursday 11 January 2024.
This email is to inform you that
The elections for the two Vice President positions will
continue with voting in 2024.
However, FIG Council has decided to postpone the election of the
Chairs Elects to 2025.
Please read below more about this decision.
Election of two FIG Vice Presidents
The call for nominations for the two Vice President positions
remains with the current deadline of Thursday 11 January
2024 and we are encouraging you to consider a
nomination for one of these positions. Election will take place
at the General Assembly 2024 in Accra Ghana on Sunday 19 and
Thursday 23 May.
If you have a good candidate for this position please use the
official nomination form and submit to me before the deadline.
Postponing the Election of 10 Commission Chairs Elects
According to the statutes and internal rules elections for
Commission Chairs Elects should take place at the General
Assembly in 2024. This is 2 years prior to the elections as
Chair which will take place in 2026 with official start of their
term of office on 1.1.2027.
During the past two FIG terms the election of commission
chairs elects have been postponed for various reasons.
- The election that should have taken place in 2016 was
postponed to 2018 due to a Task Force on the future
structure of the commissions. This means that the chairs who
were elected in 2018 for a 4 year term expiring in 2022 were
never chairs-elects.
- The next chair-elect election should have taken place in
2020 – however because the Working Week was postponed due to
the COVID19 pandemic, the current chairs were elected
“chairs elects” in 2021, thereby giving them 18 moths to
organise before their term of office as chair started on
1.1.2023.
Exception for this term
Since there were exceptions from the Statutes during the past
two terms, FIG Council wanted to follow the official Internal
Rules, and thus published the call for nominations.
However, this has meant that the current commission chairs, in
their first year of office have had to be already confronted
with succession planning. FIG Council has been attentive to the
recent comments from the chairs that they find this election
early. In order to give time to find the right candidates and to
not rush through an election, FIG council has decided that it
will be better to postpone this election until 2025, hence
withdraw the current call for nominations for Commission Chairs
Elects.
We apologise that this information comes so late, but thought
that it was better to stop now than to put unnecessary pressure
on both you as National Member Associations and the current
Chairs.
Potential change of statutes
It is now the third time that an exception has been made.
Even though there have been good reasons for each of the
exceptions, it is not optimal to continuously not follow the
statutes. This has brought Council to consider whether there is
a need for a permanent change of statutes and internal rules.
There can be several good reasons for this, among others:
- Time has changed – being a chair elect for 2½ years
(with several years before to get into the work of a
commission) and hereafter chair for 4 years are many years
to commit to, and today this might be more difficult, hence
it might be good to cut down the term with one year.
- Having elections in year two of a term means that the
chairs need to think of their succession planning already in
their first year as chair. This can be challenging.
Postponing the election one year would give the chairs two
Working Weeks to include interested persons in the
commissions and find potential candidates.
- In year 2 there is already one election taking place –
for two Vice Presidents. Separating these two elections of
Vice Chairs and Chairs Elects might give better time in the
General Assembly to focus on the potential Vice President
Candidates.
- Moving the election of the Commission Chairs Elects will
bring in extra excitement in the General Assembly in year 3.
For discussion at the General Assembly 2024, Council will
propose an agenda item on this situation and present a short
background to the matters arising and propose a way forward.
Consideration will be given to a proposal to change the
statutes during this term. If actioned, this will be subject to
a General Assembly vote.
Below, a schematic illustrates the current timeline to elect
chair-elects, as embodied in the Statutes, and an alternative
timeline for the election process.
If you have any questions, comments or queries, please get back
to FIG President Diane Dumashie or Director Louise Friis-Hansen.
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