[pp.int.general] Transparency in the party

[Zbigniew Łukasiak]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Dario <i at dario.im> wrote:
> Let me address this, as long I was one of the critics.
>
> 2013/2/26 StreetDogg <streetdogg at gmx.net>
>>
>> Am 25.02.2013 17:16, schrieb Zbigniew Łukasiak:
>>
>>> I've seen that transparency is mentioned as one of the reasons for the
>>> PPDE troubles.
>>
>>
>> The german pirate party consists of thousands of active members spread
>> over ~350 thousands of square kilometers. There simply is no way to organise
>> party wide discussion "internally" and especially no way to keep it
>> internally. The point of any discussion is to involve the members of the
>> party, therefore they all need access to it. All access barriers would be
>> counterproductive and are inherently dysfunctional where they are in place
>> amongst small groups within the party.
>>
>> I don't think "less transparency" is an option at all.
>
>
> I truly believe in transparency but you must know how to handle it in
> different degrees. Waiting for a national assembly to discuss issues,
> allowing for bickering, it is an error, used against PP-DE right now.
>
> I never said "less transparency". I said that our parties must have be
> transparency for our members (with party's facts also public for everyone)
> and ask for governments being transparent to citizens. In other words:
> transparency inside the group (party/government) to its members
> (pirates/citizens).
>
> By facts I mean information not attached to opinion, like financial
> statements, etc.

The gradualist principle sounds reasonable - but in Poland political
parties are subject of the Polish analogue of Freedom of Information
Act - and thus all documents that the party has are in effect public.
How is it in your country?

I think that the only gradualism we can have here is time based - that
is we can postpone publishing some documents a few days - but
eventually all of them can be requested by the public.

I believe that having a policy of being radically transparent has also
additional benefits.  First it is important to practice what you
preach - and usually there is some variance in practice - so it is
good to have a big margin there.  Second it is also a good training
ground - a good way to test what we could suggest to the government.

--
Z.