[pp.int.general] PPI board meeting minutes and some updates about the conference

Fri Mar 2 15:44:16 CET 2012

Kenneth, you misunderstood me. While I am no expert on it, I am quite aware
of the situation in Spain re languages, ethnicities, and regional political
parties. Germany is a great deal more federal than Italy, France or the UK,
but nowhere near to Spain (although we do have our own minorities with
other languages, such as Frisian, Danish and Sorbian, and the Danish and
Frisian have their own party). Also, what is considered a dialect in German
is often very far away from standard German, usually further than the
different languages in ex-Yugoslavia, and similair to Spain (except
Catalonian and Basque obviously). With the exception of Scots I doubt that
English speakers have something similair to the differences between Swiss
German, Bavarian German, Low German in correlation to High German.

Anyways, my question was specifically geared towards the situation between
PPI and the German Bundesland parties. There are certain similarities with
Spain, as there is a national main party, and regional main parties, and
the latter can become members of the national party. As you noted in Spain
the regional parties are not members of the national parties, unlike the
situation in Germany. So Bavaria, Hesse and Lower Saxony would already be
indirect members of PPI through PPDE, even if they would not be (or strive
for) observer membership.
I am supporter of regionalization, so I personally think that a lot of good
can come through these observer memberships. But I wanted to have a
discussion about how far we should take that before we get PPs of Dutch
provinces, Austrian Bundesländer, Swiss Cantons or German municipalities
applying for observer memberships, too. Especially in the last case it
could become problematic.
That was what I wanted the discussion to be about, I did not mean to
question the merit of having CAT (or Galicia) as observer members.

As to your other question: That would have to be discussed. It would be
fair from a democratic point of view to then allow the state parties of
PPDE in as ordinary members as well (as the one country one vote rule makes
the opinion of one German pirate obviously much less important than the
opinion of one Luxembourgian pirate from that point of view) (this
obviously does not take into account that the big number of German members
could influence the Luxembourgian member with other means).

I think the 'one country, one vote' rule makes sense as far as PPI in its
intended role is concerned, and a long as we don't have pirate parties in
places that are much more like a war zone than anything we have in Europe.
Maybe PPES, PPCAT and PPGAL could found an association called something
like 'federation of pirate parties in Spain' and exercise their PPI voting
right together through a body like that (that is specifically created for
dealing with PPI, and not for internal politics). This could be a way for
the spanish pirate parties to play within the current ppi system (which,
again, makes sense imo). Exceptions to the rule and trust in the common
sense of the members makes sense, too, though. So changing it that in
exceptional cases 1 country - 1 vote could be overturned.

I think a European Pirate Party should not have a one country, one vote
policy, btw (but a bicameral system would make sense), so what was proposed
for PPI makes sense for a possible PPEU.

-J

2012/3/2 Kenneth Peiruza <kenneth at pirata.cat>

>  Hi Justus,
>
> Yes, Galicia can't get ordinary membership with current statutes, however,
> the situation in Spain is quite different of that in Germany. It's closer
> to the one in Italy with PP-IT and PP-SudTirol.
>
> At least 7 Spanish regions have a mother tongue different than Spanish and
> represent a 40% of the Spanish population. That doesn't happens in Germany.
>
> We have 3 regions with a significative % of voters not feeling Spaniards
> (or not so much) in Spain: Catalonia
> , Vasque Country and Galicia. In a minor %, you have Asturias, Navarra,
> Valencia and Balearic Islands, then you have the rest of 17 autonomous
> regions.
>
> In Catalonia and Vasque country, over 55% of people votes always for
> non-spanish parties, sometimes up to 65%.
>
> The Spanish commies (IU, Izquierda Unida) fixed this by creating a
> confederation: One party in Catalonia and it's brother outside it (ICV +
> IU) and this is the model we're pushing forward in PP-CAT. Most Spaniard
> commies vote happily to ICV in Catalonia, whilst most Catalan commies vote
> ICV as well. Years ago, it was all IU. After organizing like IU+ICV,
> commies increased a 50% its voters in Catalonia.
>
> That is our idea: work together in International and state-wide issues,
> and organize independently on each region whenever possible (general
> elections are done region by regions in Spain, as in many countries).
>
> Samir (and I can't tell if Marcel as well) pointed out that we should
> sort-out this situation in Spain. He proposed PP-ES to loose its full
> membership status and urged PP-ES + CAT ( and now + GAL as well ) to create
> an umbrella organization which would be the full-member of PPI.
>
> That would make sense, as PP-CAT is 3.5 times bigger than PP-ES, it's a
> bit weird that they have full-membership status whilst we simply can't.
>
> There's a Spanish pirate for every 225000 Spaniards whilst there's a
> Catalan pirate for every 9966 Catalans... Moreover, we have the only 2
> pirate representatives of Spain. On the last Spanish general election
> (November 2011), over 90% of the Pirate votes were for PP-CAT...
>
> PP-ES has had several internal issues in the last years... It looked like
> its new bureau was fixing it, but suddenly it fucked up and got frozen
> again... Sadly, PP-ES hasn't taken profit of its potentiality since 2006.
>
> That's the key reason why new regional pirate parties arise in Spain. Most
> of us aren't secessionists (PP-CAT has a % of secessionists similar to that
> in Catalan society), we just try to make our job in the most efficient
> possible way. Expect others to be created as well over the next years if
> PP-ES donesn't fixes it's statute and internal democracy issues (working on
> it since 2009...).
>
> Forget about PP-CAT integrating into PP-ES, there's no way. Even if PP-ES
> fixed its statutes and internal democracy issues, at least 50% of PP-CAT
> members wouldn't be part of a Spanish party, and thinking in election
> results, a huge % of we would decline the offering. So, we need another way.
>
> PP-CAT and PP-GAL are pushing for a Pirate Confederation in Spain, to
> define basic rules for common candidatures (like EU parliament's one),
> where PP-ES can have federated regional parties like Madrid, Andalucia or
> whoever wants, whilst others can choose to become members of the
> confederation, being PP-ES itself one of the confederation members.
>
> However, internal work in PP-ES is terribly slow, thus, if we can't agree
> something before PPI's GA, we will probably propose an statute
> modification, changing "country" for "territory", so, PP-CAT and PP-GAL
> would be able to achieve full membership status.
>
> This modification would ease the integration of parties PP-CAT and PP-GAL
> into PPI, by PP-ES confirming that it's not going to present
> candidatures/lead activity in these territories, and easing the admission
> of new PPI members in places like Palestine, Turkish-Kurdistan, Irak's
> Kurdistan and so on, which lack a state but have completely independent
> politics of Israel, Turkey or Irak.
>
> Would you like/support such a statute modification?
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kenneth Peiruza
> Pirates de Catalunya
> http://pirata.cat
>
>
> On 02/03/12 02:49, Justus Römeth wrote:
>
> Thank you for posting Lola! And thank you Pat, Lola and Thomas for doing a
> job 6 people were elected with 3 people!
>
>  One question: How could Galicia get ordinary membership, though?
>
> And another would/could/should be: Is observer membership by the German
> state parties something PPI welcomes, or do you merely accept it (as there
> is a paralell with the situation in Spain)? How about local chapters
> (Pirate party of Hanover, pirate party of Frankfurt, ...)? Maybe this point
> merits discussion during the GA (in the unlikely event we run out of
> topics).
>
>  -J
>
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 1:06 AM, Lola Voronina <
> lola.voronina at pp-international.net> wrote:
>
>> Fellow Pirates,
>>
>>  Enclosed is a link to the minutes of the last PPI board meeting:
>>  http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Board_Minutes_2012-02-28
>>
>>  We also updated the conference page:
>> http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012. The next PPI conference
>> will take place in Prague on 14-15 of April. We are currently working on a
>> program (here is a draft: https://ppi.piratenpad.de/ppi-conference-agenda)
>> and invitations.
>> If you want to submit any statute amendment or other proposal add it to
>> the proposal page:
>> http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012/Proposals or write to *
>> board at pp-international.net*.
>>
>>  Best regards,
>> Lola Voronina,
>> Chief Administrative Officer, Pirate Parties International
>>  International Coordinator, Pirate Party of Russia
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________________
>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>>
>>
>
>
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>
> ____________________________________________________
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