The council could ultimately make the decision (but not the testing squad list), but I'd like to see the rationale and discussion in public anyway so that there can be buy-in to the council's decision.
Maybe (and this is OTTOMH) the promotion requirements for an orphaned package should be much higher so that, effectively, the whole community is taking on responsibility for supporting this package (i.e. ensuring it doesn't have any critical issues; or we have a way of carrying comments through from testing to Downloads)