Atheist Alliance International: arbitrariness, lack of transparency and of democracy

Panayote Dimitras

Panayote Dimitras post to Atheist Alliance International Group
posted on 25 July 2021 6:53 pm [3:53 pm UTC]

I am obliged to post here a message I sent to the AAI Board leaders about their denial of the right to vote of our Humanist Union of Greece in a way that insulted our NGO. I sent it six hours before the Annual General Meeting and requested they share it with the members and discuss it in the meeting, obviously in conjunction with the announcement of the results of the elections we were challenging. They -in a very undemocratic way- did not share it with the members and then -in a very authoritarian way- refused to discuss it at the appropriate time slot and without even asking the AGM members to decide stated they will discuss it in the end of the meeting. So it appears that this is the only way AAI members and affiliates will be informed. As we told them before withdrawing from the AGM they have vindicated the strong criticism of the AAI Board behavior by Atheist Ireland.

Addendum on 4 August 2021: “AAI now has 53 affiliates and 428 individual members” they proudly claim. Yet the voting results announced at the AGM orally but never distributed in writing showed that only 10 affiliates voted and at least one Director was elected by … 1 vote. According the the bylaws approved by the Directors 9and not the affiliates…) in December 2020: ““Quorum” is the number of persons who must be present at a meeting for voting to take place. For Board meetings, the Quorum is half of the current number of Board Directors rounded up to the nearest whole number. For General Meetings, the Quorum is one representative each from at least five Affiliates.” So the quorum for a Directors meeting is 4 Directors and for the General Meeting of all Affiliates … 5 Affiliates regardless of whether AAI has 10, 50 or 200 affiliates. As for the elections of Directors they are controlled in a totally non-transparent way by the Board and especially the Secretary: “The Secretary shall count the votes and determine which candidates have been successful on a First Past the Post basis. Candidates must receive at least one vote to be elected, even if unopposed for a role. If two or more candidates receive an equal number of Affiliate votes for a role, the Board shall have a tie-breaking vote.” With such by laws decided by the Board the results of the 2021 election were compatible with the bylaws, yet, I repeat, the bylaws drafted by the Board so as to accommodate its hold on AAI. The Council of Europe dealing with INGO Participatory Status and the UN ECOSOC Committee on NGOs have to take all that into consideration in relation to their respective accreditation of AAI.

Arbitrary and at least unprofessional denial of voting rights of Humanist Union of Greece

Panayote Dimitras <panayotedimitras@gmail.com>προς:

To: AAI Prez <president@atheistalliance.org>,
vicepresident <vicepresident@atheistalliance.org>,
Fotis Frangopoulos <secretary@atheistalliance.org>

25 July 2021, 11:30 am [8:30 UTC]

Dear AAI President, Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer

This is a formal complaint about the unprecedented denial of voting rights of the Humanist Union of Greece that we just realized as we were preparing for the AGM.

The explanation offered by the Secretary that we are not a formal organization as per by-law requirements is at least false and certainly arbitrary and aimed at our exclusion as there was no effort to explore if a NGO member of HI and EHF with so many submissions to the UN, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the ECtHR is a formal organization.

The further explanation that you arbitrarily decided we are not formal because we are not formally registered in Greece and we lack state recognition as a non-profit organization is also false. In democracies, the formal status of organizations does not require some form of state recognition. On the contrary, the very democratic civil code of Greece in its article 107 formally recognizes the “union of persons” and in a seminal case with litigators a union of persons and an excluded former member of it the Supreme Court of Greece in its Judgement 511/2008 defined the exact status of unions of persons whose legal personality had been previously recognized when first and second instance courts admitted it as a litigator (and vindicated it).

Incidentally, the NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor (of which too I am a co-founder), member of several INGOs and in existence since 1993 has the same status of union of persons and has repeatedly been so recognized by courts.

Finally, the bylaws provide no definition of what is a formal organization but it does provide an indicative definition of what is an informal organization which clearly to anyone in his/her right mind does not apply to HUG.

So we challenge your decision to deny us the right to vote arbitrarily and demeaningly calling us “not formal” and as a result we challenge the fairness of the elections. We ask that this is sent to all the AAI members and we intend to ask the AGM to rule on it.

Sincerely

Panayote Dimitras
Humanist Union of Greece

Atheist Alliance International
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Criticism[edit]

The Board of Atheist Alliance International have been accused by some secular commentators of behaving in an anti-democratic manner[11].

On 20th May 2018, AAI adopted a new set of Bylaws[12], which were then published on the AAI web site. These new Bylaws applied the following changes as compared to the previous AAI Bylaws[13], which had been in place since 2013:

  • The then existing Bylaw 5 requiring a General Meeting of the Members to amend the Bylaws was removed, and replaced with a new Bylaw 5 giving the Directors the power to update the Bylaws without reference to the Members.
  • The then existing Bylaw 56 requiring the election of Directors by the Members was removed, and replaced with a new Bylaw 31 that gave the Board the power to appoint new Directors without reference to the Members.
  • The then existing Bylaw 77 requiring the Board to arrange an Annual General Meeting of the Members was removed entirely, such that the Bylaws no longer referred to any forum in which the Members could hold the Board accountable.
  • The then existing Bylaw 78 requiring the Board to publish financial accounts to the Members was removed, such that the Members no longer had any visibility of how their subscription fees were being spent by the Board.

Several of the anti-democratic measures that were introduced by the AAI Board on 20th May 2018, still remain as part of the current AAI Bylaws[14]. For example, the current Bylaw 57 published on the AAI web site states as follows with respect to motions passed by a majority of AAI Members: “The Board shall take motions so passed into consideration but may use its discretion as to whether and how to act upon them.”

Efforts initiated by some original founding Members of AAI to resolve these accountability issues, and instead implement a more democratic structure for AAI, continued into 2021. For example, on 6th June 2021 Atheist Ireland met with the AAI Board to discuss how democratic accountability towards all valid AAI Members could be restored. On 24th July 2021, Atheist Ireland circulated a letter to all Members of AAI[15], which described the outcome of these discussions. The letter reported that during their discussions, the AAI Board admitted to communicating a false story in relation to the controversial changes that had been made to the Bylaws on 20th May 2018. Specifically, on 5th May 2021 the AAI Board sent an email to all of the AAI Members involved[16] about the controversial 2018 changes to the Bylaws. They wrote that, “The board concluded that changing the bylaws, at least temporarily, would be essential in order to turn the organisation around”. In the same email, the AAI Board then went on to write that they subsequently reversed some of their changes to the Bylaws, “Once we had made the necessary operational changes to guarantee AAI’s future”.

However, during their meeting with Atheist Ireland on 6th June 2021, the AAI Board admitted that this was not true, and that they had concocted a false narrative in their email of 5th May 2021. Instead, the AAI Board accepted that they had always intended their controversial 2018 changes to the Bylaws to be permanent. In fact, their motivation for reversing some of the controversial 2018 changes to the Bylaws was to retain Consultative Status with the United Nations, which requires a democratic structure. That is, during their 6th June 2021 meeting with Atheist Ireland, the AAI Board admitted that their intent had always been to permanently remove democratic accountability from AAI when they changed the Bylaws in 2018. During the same meeting, the AAI Board also accepted that they subsequently manufactured a mendacious story in order to cover this up.

Atheist Alliance International has responded on their web site to some of this criticism[17]. Within their response, the AAI Board admitted that when arranging the meeting on 20th May 2018, they incorrectly excluded several Member organisations that should have been included as then valid members of AAI. The excluded AAI Members were thereby improperly prevented from voting on the controversial 2018 Bylaws.

After the AAI Board reinstated Annual General Meetings in order to retain their Consultative Status at the United Nations, such an AGM was held on 25th July 2021. At that AGM, there were again complaints about the AAI Board preventing legitimate Members from voting. For example, the Humanist Union of Greece complained[18] that despite being a fully paid-up AAI Member, they were not permitted to vote during elections for Director roles, and they were not permitted to discuss their complaint during the AGM. Moreover, it was also observed that since the AAI Board had removed Bylaw 56 requiring an independent Returning Officer, the candidates had managed their own election process[19] before the AGM began. A statement was also published by the Greek Helsinki Monitor[20] describing a series of complaints about a lack of transparency during the 2021 AGM. For example, it was reported that while there were 53 Affiliate Member Organisations within AAI at the time, only 10 voted and some Directors were elected with only 1 vote. In addition to objecting to the lack of any details about which Affiliate Member Organisations were allowed to vote and why, the Greek Helsinki Monitor statement concludes that the current Bylaws were, “drafted by the Board so as to accommodate its hold on AAI”.