29/11/2011 (The Star) - While the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) grouping deserve a big pat on the back for its successful 9th Annual Roundtable Meeting (RT9), the least can be said about the RSPO 8th General Assembly (GA8).

The conclusion of RT9 last Friday should see the commencement of the RSPO GA8 that will, among others, seek its members to pass five major resolutions.

But then, the GA8 had failed to draw enough quorum. Actually, 275 members out of the 549 total members are needed for the GA to be conducted but it fell short by 50 members.

This, in fact, is the first time that the RSPO could not get a quorum to hold its GA.

However, despite the insufficient quorum, the RSPO executive board had decided to proceed with the GA8, much to the dissatisfaction among some of its members.

As to the voting on the proposed resolutions, it was also decided by the executive board that the 224 members and the proxies present should vote first in the GA8. Later, the proposed resolutions would be e-mailed to all RSPO ordinary members for them to vote on.

Given the insufficient quorum, those who attended the GA8 had raised “a point of order” as whether the move by the RSPO executive board was appropriate since the “right” approach would be to call off the GA.

One high-ranking RSPO member had even requested that the move by the RSPO executive board (to proceed with the GA) must be approved by members at the GA.

It is ironic that despite RSPO's success in attracting almost 1,000 participants comprising mainly its own members to RT9, the GA8 failed to get enough quorum.

While the reason given by RSPO president Jan Kees Vis was that the new RSPO members were far away in Latin America and Africa, in actual fact, those who cannot attend can still send proxies to the GA.

Many were also wondering what was actually happening as the insufficient quorum situation at the RSPO GA was believed to be unprecedented. Was there any undercurrent move which is brewing that brought about this situation at RSPO GA8?

One market observer pointed out that quite a number of Indonesian RSPO members, who are captains of the palm oil industry and who used to attend the RT and GA, were conspicously missing.

In the past, the collaboration between Malaysian Palm Oil Association and GAPKI (Indonesian Palm Oil Association) had helped to pool the producer members together under the IndonesiaMalaysia Palm Oil Group, but sadly there was no such pre-council this year.

While there was no clash between the oil palm producers on the RSPO executive board this year, the “tone” of indifference towards the GA8 may reflect the brewing tension, given the lacklustre market offtakes of their certified sustainable palm oil.

On the proposed five resolutions, all have been agreed upon by those attending the GA8 but they have “not” been passed.

One resolution, which was jointly proposed by many sectors including the executive board, to create a new position of vertically integrated Transnational Corporations into the executive board had resulted in a tie.

Nevertheless, this is not the final result but just an indication since the RSPO secretariat will be sending e-mails on the resolutions via a referendum to members who did not attend the GA8.

The replies from members would fall into three categories For, Against or Abstain. However, one planter had jokingly said that this year, there would be an additional category which is No Reply'!

It will be more interesting if the votes via e-mail by members were less than the 50 votes needed, thus still not meeting the GA8 quorum. This will result in some complication, which will have to be carefully sorted out by the RSPO executive board and its secretariat.