Bill, I think that there is always an opportunity to develop a good dialog if they are willing to listen. When I was managing a ccTLD things were easier, but when the DNS became so relevant to become itself a new "industry," conflicts and fight for power (who knows what kind of powers) started in many government "managed" ccTLDs.

I like that Fadi visited CGI.BR and shared the experience and the great work they do. I may not be 100% on the same page with the BR guys, but it is a good example on how a ccTLD has to be managed in a multistake holder fashion. After I left the ccTLD administration (1993, we can still consider it the early days of the Internet, particularly in AR where we didn't have wide access to the general public) things where up and down, they never got to work it right or manage it right. I attribute that mostly to a lack of resources but mostly just plain vanilla incompetence. Not long ago there was a promising sign of change, when at that moment the government office (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) that was running the ccTLD admin since its registration (1987) signed a cooperation agreement with CGI.BR.

Well, more than a year ago, after many fights about who was the right "owner" for the ccTLD admin, the responsibility got transferred to the Legal and Technical Undersecretary office of the President, wth ? ... the most natural place for it to be right ? That office is mostly filled with political appointees that doesn't have a clue at all, they trashed the cooperation agreement with CGI.BR and have been struggling for almost two years to develop and implement a new system, and the only thing they keep asking and doing is updating registrant records because when they claim to have millions of domain name (being #1 in LAC,) most of them are bogus, owned by domain name poachers,  or just parked. When our ccTLD turned 25 years, like many other in the region and they were recognized at one of the ICANN meetings, nobody showed up their face for AR.

Many, many, many, times people tried to establish communication channels and try to push for a more participatory model, where people from all sectors including civil society are part of the dialog, but there is no interest to make that happen. The NIC.AR page has been the same for ages, when the current group took over they only changed banners and a logo, the latest news shown in the page are from June 2012, to be frank, a real shame.

On the other hand, some people that became since long time ago part of the ICANN "ecosystem," playing different roles, actually jumping from one chair to another just to be able to stay in the system and keep milking the organization, and who claimed to be representatives, advisers, whatever, and that have been involved in the development if the new gTLD program, didn't know for example that ICANN had allocated some financial support for countries (one per country as needed) to present objections, and many other details that you would expect from an ICANNite to provide good advice.

About the particular case of Patagonia, end users form Argentina (actually was an Argentinean residing in Japan) created an informal group to oppose the application of Patagonia, Inc. There are many reasons why people don't like the application, mine is primarily centered in the fact that given that the string is not included in ANY international standard or list clearly defined as a geographic region, and that the applicant requested EXCLUSIVE use for it. This application then falls in a grey area for the evaluation where the process/criteria used will set precedent for future applications.

I've been telling people, including the "government" that by just claiming sovereignty, or citing hollow documents (like the such distributed by Erick,) or that they represent the interest of the citizens and local Internet users (which most of them have absolutely no clue what ICANN is and what for, and what the heck is a gTLD and the existence of this application,) will not cut in this process. Yes after we made so much fuss about it, people started to add comments and if the Independent Objector wants to show that he is doing his job, he has no choice to ignore one of the applications with a large number of community comments.

The true thing is that while governments and policies (particularly in developing countries) fluctuate with each election cycle, many times disconnected and not in tune with the dynamics the Internet has created, the net keeps moving packets, adding users, and the DNS resolving names into IP address, which still TODAY is the primary service, not a trademark marketing billboard, not a sovereign territorial  piece of virtual land, nor the circus that ICANN created of it wasting a lot of time and resources on endless discussions in an organization that in 15 years is still trying to define what it is and how it has to operate. 

Yes we can have more dialog, we can do more talking, but it will be great if once in a while we just do SOMETHING ... A good example of a great program that made the Internet more inclusive and open to the rest of the world ... IDN.  The new gTLD program, IMHO is just a circus and a desperate opportunity to keep milking the ecosystem while it still exists ... I've no doubt that sooner or later the next Tim Berners Lee will make us all useless and obsolete ...

My .02

Jorge