Pakistan and Egypt stuffed?

Summary:

We got indications that 2 P-members countries were stuffed with Microsoft Business Partners. Those two countries applied for P membership in late August and voted Yes without any comments. Don't be surprised if they are out of reach for the European Commission.

Pakistan and Egypt stuffed?

zoobab 20 Mar 2008 14:42

A while ago, someone reported that Egypt was probably stuffed with Microsoft Business Partners:

I would like to report irregularity in Egypt as well. I heard that MS asked as much as its partner to join the Egyptian Organization for Standards committee. MS has used those partners to vote Yes without comments and successfully gained majority inside the committee. They imposed the retaining of last Sept Egypt's vote Yes whatever the result of BRM meeting. This is clearly unclean play that MS used in most countries like in Sweden and other countries.

Pakistan seems also to be suspect with 4 Microsoft Gold partners:

ISO needs consent of 2/3rd majority by the world countries to push OOXML as a standard. Moreover, our beloved Pakistan has initially voted FOR OOXML (The meeting was held hush-hush by the PSQCA and on the board were 4 Microsoft Gold members!!).

Open Source India has also some indications that the opposition was not heard, and that Microsoft controls 5 seats there:

Now here is the interesting bit: Out of the 12 committee members, four are Microsoft Gold Partners, one was a Microsoft representative and the rest were academics. After the invalidated vote in Sweden, I am not surprised that so many Microsoft Gold Partners were on this committee. I tried to check whether the open source community's views were taken into consideration before the voting but currently I do not have information on this.

Maybe the committee is still growing, like in Romania?