The worst-kept secret of this year's IGF was blown during the Opening Ceremony when a Brazilian speaker (either Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazilian Extraordinary Minister for Strategic Affairs, or Augusto César Gadelha Vieira, Coordinator of CGI.br - please follow up to this post to correct me if you know), explicitly called for ICANN "to pass on its power to a more inclusive organisation, without confrontation and without any problem."

He went on to state that the transfer of ICANN's power should not be to a universal association of states, but "must also give power to global civil society." He acknowledged that global civil society is still in the process of organising itself, but stated that its further organisation should be stimulated by the role it is called upon to adopt in Internet governance, rather than being a precondition of its assumption of that role. He called on the civil society associations present at the IGF to have courage to lead a participatory democratic movement to form a more inclusive successor to ICANN.

Hopefully this will set aside the false assumption of certain media commentators that Brazil and other stakeholders seeking the reform of institutional arrangements for critical Internet resources intend for those arrangements to be assumed by the ITU. Nobody has seriously entertained that as an option since WGIG's report, dismissing the ITU as a candidate, was presented two years ago.

The Opening Session really only differed from the Opening Ceremony by having a broader range of speakers. Whereas the latter was limited to speakers from the Brazilian hosts and the delivery of a message from the Secretary General, the Opening Session began with a speaker from the ITU in recognition of their initiation of the WSIS process (and indirectly, and unwittingly, the IGF), followed by high-level representatives from each of the other stakeholders groups (with a bias towards governments). Most of the speeches were full of plaititudes and generalisations, and they do not call for particular note except to say that they followed the usual "stakeholder lines" that I have outlined here before.

One speaker who does deserve a brief mention is Paul Twomey of ICANN, who painted that organisation as a multistakeholder body in its own right, and had the cheek to remark, "we are pleased that the IGF is also following this model." This ignores the fact that, as Slavka Antonova argued at Giganet yesterday, the structures that ICANN has defined have produced a number of unequal spheres of participation and influence, of which civil society's is the most remote. Doubtless, Twomey will feel a bit more heat this afternoon during the Critical Internet Resources session.