[pp.int.general] Pirates and the 5 Star Movement

[carlo von lynX]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 03:27:03PM +0100, Cal. wrote:
> Youngs are a strict minority, and they're probably voting the movement,
> not the grillo leader???they could move any moment to a pirate party, if
> they're not enough brainwashed.

I'll elaborate on that...

M5S has done an impressive job but as Pirates it is our duty
to point our finger to the severe issues in M5S' internal
democracy.. or rather its lack of.

It is easy to have a beautiful party programme if others are
writing it for you and you remain in full power to decide
what choices the movement actually makes.

Our criticism is well-known within the more active among the
M5S activists (not necessarily the ones that comment in blogs)
and shared by many of them, since they brought the topic up
before us. We just developed our own opinion, read the statutes
and came to the same conclusions.

They are all just waiting for Grillo and his staff, the
Casaleggio company, to fulfil the promises of making everyone
take part in decisions and pass the movement into the hands of 
true grassroots, electronic or liquid democracy.

And many important figures know that we are fighting out the
extremely difficult next step: being a party without a board.
So they are already looking at us to share our experience,
the good and the bad, as "uno vale uno" - each person counts
as one - is their essential party motto and they care very
much for solutions to actually make this possible.

There are four possible scenarios:

- Grillo fulfills his promise and the movement starts
  practicing what it preaches. If they're so good that they
  even fulfil the core pirate dreams and get rid of their
  populist stuff in the current programme, a merger is not out
  of the question.. I say merger because our statutes are
  more suitable to the job then theirs - and I especially
  mean merger in the international perspective. I know how
  unimportant we are on a local level.

- Grillo does not and a relevant number of activists
  leaves the movement to form its own party.

- Grillo does not and a relevant number of activists
  leave to join the Pirate Party because we are ahead with
  our liquid directorate and maybe got it working by then.

- Grillo does not and nothing happens. I presume in that case
  population will soon figure out that it just elected a new
  Berlusconi* and look for new alternatives. And that case
  the race is open again, and Italy is currently *very* fluid.


*) AFAIK in 1994 Berlusconi launched his FORZA ITALIA movement
   in a similar way to Beppe Grillo, with a company running
   the party and allowing no democratic interference at all.
   The success was very similar. In 1994 it worked by television
   that Berlusconi happened to run. This time it was the Internet.