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

[Kenneth Peiruza]

Btw... Most of your figures and statements about elections are wrong, and everyone can confirm most of them in wikipedia.

Thanks God for only talking about what you know for sure /irony

Some of your mistakes:


PP-cat started with regional elections, with just 1 week of life, reaching a 0.21%, not 0.4%

In fact PP-ES already tried to run for election, back in 2009, achieving less than 2500 signatures, thus being unable to participate. Sad you didn't knew this about your own history... Or you just avoided it because it made a better paragraph for your reply...

About municipal election... Being the bureau of a political party and not knowing that they are done all at once in all Spain is a bit disapointing, to be polite.

In the municipal elections our candidature's results went from 0.79% to more than 8%, achieving 2 seats, not your figures.

And about our origins, less than 10 out of 30 founding members of PP-CAT belonged to PP-ES.


This tells a lot about the accuracy of your "only confirmed stuff" and about the quality of your official reply/work.

Sadly everyone can check it on the Internet. Liars or incompetents? Either option is a bad one, but for the way you handled the figures, IMO, it's both.

About the agreement we reached in last general election.... Did you knew that we chased you for weeks and that your first official reply to our cooperation offering was that you wanted to present a candidature in Catalonia? (don't look at me, I wasn't the one dealing with you in this or any other issue). After weeks behind it we only got a piece of shit telling that you wouldn't run for THAT election in Catalonia (which in fact was impossible for you as you even couldn't run in Madrid) and that lost journalists and people would be forwarded. You still lack to add a link to our website, btw, and at least 3 nowadays catalan pirates confirm that until your current bureau, you violated your part, and I don't properly remember what happened with a transexual trying to join pp-cat that your former secretary ignored and even avoided to affiliate to your party.



Did you knew that we offered a confederational agreement at least 5 times? how do you expect to deal with us if you don't even talk to us about what are we asking for? If you expext us to federate under PP-es you undertood and know nothing about spanish politics. Only 2 out of 7 parties in the Catalan parliament are federated to a Spanish party. The social democrats of spain (PSOE) and the spanish conservatives (Partido Popular). The greens+commies decided to confederate, and we would love it as well. The other 4 parties have no relationship with any other spanish party, but secessionist ones from Basque country, Valencia, Balearic Islands and Galucia.

Btw, did you knew that 2 of your most anti-confederation  former bureau members belonged to Partido Popular (famous for its catalanophobic retoric) and to a catalanophobic association respectively? Dunno much about Daniel Riaño, only that he's a professional troll even in your mailing lists, and about the other anti-confederation guy,  well, he was the one who Elias has recently described as the artist of logging votes and not logging census (btw, it was also possible to track votes and link it to voters).


And after recognizing your professionality and knowledge about your party, lets talk about the real issue: 

Becoming a subsidiary of a spanish party in catalonia means that you must fight for less  than 40% of voters, most of them over 40, with local media against you and with the spanish mass media supporting either PSOE or Partido Popular. No way. To do our job in a realistic way, which is spreading our message and getting votes, the best way is the way we took. 

Under the eyes of most catalan young people, you're a unionist party. Even being 2 separate parties, most Catalan secessionists think we are unionists. Figure out if we were a federated party.


We've told you this in Spanish and now in english as well.

For the sake of this list, for me this thread is dead.

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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