FIG Council postpones the election of Commission Chairs Elects for the term 2025-26

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.