[pp.int.general] Pirate Party Situation in Spain

[Kenneth Peiruza]

My 2 cents

1) I have no perdonal issues with nobody in pirata but a guy who never hold any position, Gabriel Serrano.
2) i can tell you names and surnames of 4 members deleted from PP-es census even with some yearly fees paid in advance, even one of your former bureau members didn't had right to vote (Angel Badia) and another former bureau member confirmed these points in ppi's mailing list months ago. Your former treasurer. I got deleted from your census, with my fee paid and with your secretary's email replied. FYI spanish law makes it mandatory to send at least a letter, not an email, to remove anyone from a NPO or a party. Illegal activities are illegal, no mather who does it.
3) can you tell me what attacks did I made? What lack of respect? I just saw yours...
4) the suggestion to take away ppi's full membership wasn't mine but from one of ppi's co-chairman. I just support it.
5) after the foundational ppi's GA, every party might confirm its belonging to ppi. Till this date, it has never been voted or discussed in any PP-ES GA, then you aren't a full member. Btw, the signature in ppi's statutes for pp-es was suposedly mine, and believe me, that signature behind my name isn't mine.
6) illegal activities and statute violations had been too common in the past of pp-es. Don't ask me to bring you to court to state it even more clear, as that would be harmful for the pirate movement in Spain.
7) yes, we've more than 750 members in a region with 7.5M people, and you have less than 250 in a 45m state. If the ammount of active members was more or less the same... Why our bureau receives 3-4 times the votes your bureau has?
8) I'm not the only Catalan pirate rid of this situation, it's too common over here. Our last decision with your former bureau was to let you die alone, and I was the last bureau's member to resign to accept it.
9) We've been waiting for this miraculous statutes reform for up to 3 years.
10) I'll be glad to accept your apologies

Regards, 


Eduardo Perdices <edupergar at gmail.com> escribió:Hello,
 
This is an official statement of Spain's PP directory board concerning the situation of the Pirate parties active in Spain.
 
We  are addressing this issue not because we think this is something of  general interest for most members of the PPI, neither because we think  this is the right time or place to present a status questions on this  subject. We are writing this statement because we have been asked to do  so by some members of the PPI's directory board due, we think, an  unrelenting string of defamatory and derogatory  (and mostly false)  accusations of inefficiency, corruption or lack of nerve upon our party  and the party's directory boards, coming from one single individual from  another Spanish Pirate Party, namely Pirates de Catalunya. No other  member of this party has supported this singular individual in his  accusations. Not at least in public, to the best of our knowledge. Were  not for this request, we wouldn't have risked to waste the PPIs members  time, even less being so close to the General Assembly in Prague.
 
We are going to talk about things we  know for fact, or what we know as a result of serious consults, of  information from the other part. We do not talk by hearsay, and when we  are not sure about some something, we'll state this clear.
 
PIRATE PARTIES IN SPAIN
 
First  of all let us clarify what's the situation in Spain, regarding the  functioning of recognized political parties describing themselves as  "pirates". The Spanish Partido Pirata (hence PIRATA) got official status  in December 2006 and almost 4 years later (Nov. 2010) a pirate party  limited in scope to the Autonomous Community of Cataluña, Pirates de  Catalunya (hence Pirates) was recognized as well. Most of the people  from Pirates were members of PIRATA. Some of them retained a double  affiliation up to this day. Just a few months ago, a number of 7-8  members of PIRATA from the Autonomous Community of Galicia got political  recognition to a new party called Piratas de Galiza
 
PIRATA  never really got the public eye or gained enough momentum to  participate in any election before the IX General Assembly (18/09/2010).  It lacked affiliates, money founds and political support, it was  riddled with personal strife and got itself an ill designed set of  regulations that prevented growth and discouraged active participation.  Worst of all, the "Estatutos" contained a "blocking article" demanding a  seemingly impossible to reach quorum of 90% of affiliates to allow  significant internal reforms. 
 
While  it would be disingenuous to suggest that the political performance of   the Directive Bureau of PIRATA that emerged from the IX General Assembly  was exactly efficient, at least during his term it was possible to  participate for the first time in local elections, and after strenuous  efforts to make the affiliates aware of the "blocking article" issue, it  was possible to change the "blocking article" to alleviate the quorum  and thus allow statutory changes with a quorum of 66%, instead of the  previous 90%.
 
On  10/12/2011 the X General Assembly of PIRATA took place, and the newly  elected Directive Bureau pledged its first priority would be the change  of statutes and the building of a new, confederate organization for  PIRATA. Since then, we have been discussing the text of the statutes.  The statutory process is going apace and in a few months time we will be  able to vote a new statutes far more democratic, far more efficient and  open, not so reluctant to change and improvement, and decidedly less  centralized and more adopted to Spain's decentralized political  structure. We have also made important changes and provisions in the  mailing lists and means of communications with affiliates and now we  have again a "Comité de derechos y Garantías" (a Court of Arbitration,  that was deserted by its former incumbents during the bitter internal  riffles of the first part of 2011). The new Statutes will make possible  for any pirate party (PP-CAT and PP-GA in the first place) to federate  with PIRATA, or to any pirates around to start swiftly a working pirate  infrastructure. We like to think that in fact, we have very good  relationship with most members of the other pirate parties in Spain and  elsewhere and we are open to full cooperation with them. In return, we  would appreciate at least some personal respect in public fora.
 
PIRATES IN ELECTIONS
 
Due  to the partially decentralized election calendar in Spain, Pirates was  the first pirate party to present itself to elections, in 2010,  obtaining a 0'4% of the votes in the municipal elections in Catalonia.  In Feb. 2011 took place local elections in most of Spain at the  municipal (Catalonia excluded) and Autonomous level. PIRATA participated  in this elections and obtained a 0'3% of the votes in Madrid and 0'31%  in Málaga.
 
Starting  2011, political parties without previous acquired representation in the  Cortes, are asked to collect the signature of 0,1% of the census on  each province of Spain to be able to opt for a chair in the Parliament  or the Senate. The former Directive Bureau arrived at an agreement with  Pirates. Under such agreement, Pirates will try to collect the  signatures in Catalonia (4 provinces) and PIRATA would do the same in  the rest of Spain, but would not try to collect signatures in Catalunya.  Pirates got enough signatures to present their candidacies in the 4  Catalan provinces, while PIRATA collected enough signatures to do the  same in 4 provinces (failing to collect the 100% of the required  signatures in Madrid was a specially painful blow). In general, we  reached similar results in the provinces where a pirate party could be  voted (around 0,66% the best Province of Pirates and 0,54% the best one  of PIRATA, Navarra). Both parties collaborated during all the political  campaign.
 
We  think our agreement with PP-CAT in the last general elections of 2011  was a venturous move from both parts and we hope we will be able to  promote more fruitful collaboration as long as personal respect is  maintained from both sides.
 
NUMBER OF PIRATES
 
We  will address this issue since the person delivering his attacks on  PIRATA is doing so partly because personal issues (which is to loathe)  but partly because he is claiming full voting rights for Pirates, which  is not an irrational request, but is ill presented. While we don't  necessarily oppose to that, we must protest that (a) in pursuing this  agenda he even promotes to take away Spain Pirate Party vote and (b) he  is misleading the PPI members when quoting pirate numbers as a reason to  present Pirates as a far bigger party that PIRATA.
 
When  the former Directive Bureau decided to vote the change of the "blocking  article" of the statutes, it faced the impressive difficulty of the  required quorum: a 90% of the affiliates. The number of affiliates had  kept slowly growing over the years, but many of them where just names of  people who arrived to our webpages, liked us and our aims, signed as  affiliates and then kissed bye-bye forever. With no quotes to pay or any  other kind of requirement for permanency, it was impossible to know how  many of them where actual members of PIRATA. The directive bureau tried  to know how many of them were real affiliates, ready at least to reply  to an email requiring from them to confirm their willingness to belong  to PIRATA. During a period of several months, no less than two emails  (in some Autonomous communities three or four) were sent to anybody who,  at some point of his or her existence had shown some prior desire to  belong to PIRATA. If no answer whatsoever was obtained, the name was  considered no longer an affiliated, but still a sympathizer. In this  way, a new, more realistic census of affiliates was created. Thus it was  possible to vote the reform of "blocking article", slightly passing the  90% of quorum (and with massive support for the reform) but the number  of affiliates dropped to slightly less than a half of the theoretical  numbers of affiliated that had been counted before. Now the number of  affiliates is about 250, while the theoretical number of affiliates one  and half year ago was around 500.
 
Today  we are in the process of introducing a moderate quota for our  affiliates (a regular quota of 2€ a month and a reduced quota of 1€ for  whoever doesn't want to pay the full quota.) This will slightly  alleviate our chronic lack of founds and, most important will make our  affiliates more aware of the importance of being a full pirate. Being  PIRATA as participative as it is, we would more happily welcome as an  affiliate one person willing to discuss, vote, join us in person and  spare 12€ a year with the party than having registered in a spread sheet  the name of ten people about whom we don't know anything else but their  family names and identity number.
 
Pirates  claim they have about 700 affiliates (who are paying no quota), and we  do not protest this number, but considering the votes in elections, the  real participation in web votes etc. we don't feel like there is a lot  of difference in real membership. The problem is that just counting  "affiliates" can give you a very different picture, depending on what is  needed to count as an affiliate.
 
According  to their own last reports to us (that can actualized a soon as they are  willing to do so) we estimate the actual number of members of Pirates  de Galiza is about a dozen, most of them also belonging to PIRATA.
 
PERSONAL ISSUES

We  have had personal issues both within PIRATA and with Pirates in the  past. This is probably natural and even inevitable due the prolonged  contact and charged issues. This is not to condone the heath and hatred  of some written interchanges that have been seen in the lists of PPI. We  will do our best to keep the personal issues away from this list  forever, and in return we would love not to hear again the same  inflammatory messages we have been reading in the past and, for the most  part, passed in silence.
 
PIRATA AND PPI

Someone has made the claim on this list  that our current statutes forbid us to be members of PPI. That is simply  not true, as you can check reading our current statutes (in Spanish: https://www.partidopirata.es/resources/estatutos_pirata.pdf ).
 
PIRATA  considers essential to its role as a pirate party to be a part of the  PPI. We are proud of it, we will try to help the PPI in everything  within our reach and we hope that soon we will be able to host the  General Assembly of the PPI.
 
We  are ready to answer any honest question the PPI members and its board   is willing to do to us as the Directive Bureau, or to any of its members  about any related issue. We also hope that this will be the last time  we have to entertain the PPI members with such internal issues.  In the  future, we will not respond in public to the kind of vicious attacks we  have been addressed by one person of Pirates in the past, but we reserve  our right to call such importune public invectives against PIRATA or  its members to the attention of the PPI court of arbitration. 
 
Best regards, liebe Grüße, nos sincères salutations, saludos
 
Spain's PP directory board

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