For reference, here is a brief description of how the JUA Board of Directors works. Japan is the largest unicycling country in the world with an estimated one million riders, about 10,000 of which are serious unicyclists in the sense that they participate in unicycle competitions or attend club meetings regularly.
The JUA has had remarkable success in promoting unicycling in Japan. The main success of the JUA has been in promoting unicycling in elementary schools (about 95%). One of the secrets to the success of the JUA is that the Japanese Ministry of Education has officially approved unicycling as a sport, which enables us to obtain large budgets from various sources.
The JUA Board of Directors consists of about 20 directors, almost all of whom are prominent members of society, heads of educational organizations, company presidents, former government officials of high standing, and the like. In addition, there are about 35 representatives from the various regions in Japan. The Board of Directors meets twice or three times a years, and has full voting rights. The regional representatives do not participate in these meetings, and have no voting rights at all.
Because of these circumstances, as an organization the JUA has failed to represent the needs of unicycle clubs and unicycle competitions, of serious unicyclists (about 10,000) that compete in national meets and Unicons, rather than schoolchildren who unicycle casually. This is not the place to go into detail, but the main reason for this has been the following.
With the exception of myself, all or most members of our large Board of Directors have been mostly out of touch with the reality and the needs of the clubs and other unicyclists. They focused almost exclusively on voting, budgets, politics, getting money from sponsors, and the like, and ignored such issues as judging and racing rules, organizing teams to Unicon, and the like. This is now in the process of changing, and an important step has been taken by establishing the International Committee of the JUA, which will deal strictly with IUF and international matters.
What I wish to emphasize is that the Board of Directors of any unicycling organization, including the Executive Board of the IUF, should include members that are directly involved with local activities and that could directly represent their needs.
In light of the above, if another qualified candidate is not available, the members of the Executive Board should be allowed to serve as Regional or National Representatives. Another reason is that the number of qualified representatives is still small, so that disallowing Executive Board members from being IUF Representatives would harm the IUF.