[pp.int.general] Formal protest from Pirate Party Australia

[HerNenya]

Ahoy Pirates,

We (PP-GAL) agree that this is an important issue to discuss seriously
to straight things in PPI.

Respecting the issues that PP-AU has exposed about PPI's Constitution,
we think the criteria to choose would be the logical position not
establish states "UN" as scope for membership in the PPI. We suggest to
propose a motion to amend the statutes of the PPI stating that the
suitable criteria is the ability to carry out projects or from
contesting parliament elections.

Regarding the issues about how to work with remote delegates, we
completely agree with the proposals stated by PP-AU. Therefore, we have
nothing else to add to their proposal.

Just remember that this is just an opinion from PP-GAL as our condition
of a hopefully soon-to-be observer members. We had applied to be
observer members at the last GA but unfortunately there were not enough
time to vote our application. So we have no right to vote, and we don't
think it's necessary to apply to a full membership since the regional
pirate parties of Spain are finessing the statutes of the Pirate
Confederation. These documents will be registered at the ministry before
the next summer.

We (PP-GAL) have applied to membership as observers since all regional
parties in Spain include in our respective statutes that we are going to
confederate only with other registered Pirate Parties which also are
members of PPI. That is one the main reasons to our application in PPI.
You'll hear from other regional Pirate Parties of Spain to apply to get
this kind of membership soon.

PP-ES has a lots of internal problems since the beginning. One of their
main problems, the old statutes that were impossible to work with, is
already solved, but the problem of constant trolling has become really
nasty these last years not only internally but also here in PPI as you
have already seen it.

The last board and CoA of PP-ES tried hard to settle this problem too
without success since some of the trolls were occupying strategic
positions in PR, in the board and in the PP-ES CoA. The situation this
year is worse than ever since the current board has not covered all the
members they require because no one else wants to deal with this
problem. Besides, trolls are still occupying positions in PR, and the
board. There is not CoA running at the moment as far as I know.

We (all the regional pirate parties of Spain, including PP-CAT) wanted
PP-ES be a part of the Confederation we are developing since the
beginning. All regional parties are working just fine for a year in
projects that affects to us all, but trolls in PP-ES always block any
kind of PP-ES participation with us in any project. This situation is so
serious to the point trolls are avoiding PP-ES's assembly to vote to say
'yes' or 'no' to be a part of the Confederation. This is happening for a
whole year. We still do not know at this moment if they are going to
launch that poll at all.

All the spaniard pirates that want to work seriously have realized
during the last years that the only way to be able to work to spread the
Pirate Ideology and to work efficiently in projects to help the
situation in Spain, is to be independent in our respective countries and
work together under the umbrella of a Confederation. We are now 5
regional parties, and we know that there are two more groups preparing
their own statutes to be registered this year. If we are going to be at
the end 17 regional pirate parties working together at the
confederation, so be it. If it is the only way to get good results at
the end, we see nothing wrong with that. It is much better to work from
bottom-up to top-down.

PP-CAT has said several times that their vote as full membership is
going to be forwarded to the Spanish Confederation. If PP-ES had willed
to Confederate with us in the first place, and had worked seriously as a
political party, nothing of this mess would have happened. For further
details, please contact us in a private message since it is not our
intention to start a flame here.

It is really sad for us to get to this point. Also it upset us deeply
the constant attacks from PP-ES trolls to any PP-CAT members who dare to
say anything at this mailing list as any pirate's voice. This kind of
behaviour is despicable.

We are sorry that you have not seen much activity from PP-GAL
internationally. There are a lot of stuff to face and we are few people
working daily, so we had to establish priorities in order to get the
urgent things done on time. Fabian Plaza is sending reports regularly to
Pirate Times of the projects we are approaching, and our intention
is that he will be our International Coordinator as soon as he is ready.
At that time, you'll hear from us more often.

Meantime, we have voted that Muriel Rovira from PP-CAT is going to be
our delegate in PP-EU bussiness as the Confederation delegate. The rest
of the regional parties already registered have voted positively the
same subject. We trust completely in her and her work.

This is regarding the situation in Spain as PP-GAL's point of view. We
hope things are clearer regarding to our intentions and our procedures.


Best Regards,


Isabel Fernandez.
GPG Key EA63DF8E
International Coordinator of PP-GAL
PR Coordinator of PP-GAL
Secretary General of PP-GAL
www.piratasdegalicia.org

On 10/03/13 06:13, Simon Frew wrote:
> Below is an official mail sent to the Board of PPI.
> 
> We have yet to receive any sort of acknowledgement that it was received or
> discussed by the Board. So in the interests of transparency I thought the
> best course of action was to post it to the general discussion list as the
> formal means of communication seem to be failing.
> 
> Greetings
> 
> I am writing on behalf of Pirate Party Australia to lodge a formal protest
> concerning the conduct of the previous two Pirate Party International
> General Assemblies and the malaise it has caused within our organisation.
> 
> The problem is exacerbated by the lack of response to the resignation of
> the Court of Arbitration. The CoA should be working to address the root
> causes of the in-fighting that is a feature of the PPI discussion lists
> over the last months and could provide added insight into these feuds and
> to help bring them to a resolution.
> 
> The threat to sue the CoA illustrates problems within PPI. The Constitution
> is being routinely ignored. The threat itself demonstrates a lack of
> respect for the rules governing the International. How can an organisation
> function when a body elected to apply the constitution is threatened with
> Lawyers when they make a decision a member Party doesn't like?
> 
> The Constitution states that only one member be allowed from each country,
> yet we have two parties from Spain. From a historical perspective this is
> an understandable decision, so it raises the need to address this in the
> Constitution as the decision itself is unconstitutional.
> 
> The above examples show a disregard for the statutes and decision making
> processes agreed upon at the first GA. It is perfectly fine to radically
> change the statutes if the current model is not working, it is not fine to
> ignore it when its inconvenient. This sort of disregard of due process is
> the sort of thing that enables corruption to flourish.
> 
> The issues that remote delegates experienced at the last General Assembly
> were hard to stomach because it was largely a re-run of the problems of the
> year before. Remote delegates were ignored, much of the meeting got bogged
> down in process and important resolutions were tabled for a whole year so
> celebrity speakers could address the meeting. The organisation is not yet
> fully formed and getting through motions with ample participation and
> debate should be the first and overriding priority. Everything else is just
> dressing which can come later.
> 
> Addressing these issues is not a matter of holding a PPI congress outside
> of Europe, but actually facilitating better participation by remote
> delegates. Personally, I think the motivation for the GA to be held outside
> of Europe was to make Europeans take remote participation seriously by
> creating a much greater need for it to function. The cost of sending
> delegates from Australia would run into the multiple thousands of dollars
> and is not economically feasible, with this money being much better spent
> on campaigns. This is not a cost we *must* incur; remote participation has
> a negligible cost and will help out every single Party unable to attend.
> 
> PPAU holds our annual congresses with a large amount of participation
> online. Being roughly the size of the EU but much more sparsely populated,
> we had to get online participation right immediately or we risked
> disenfranchising pretty much everyone not from Sydney or the surrounding
> areas. Consequently, we'd like to offer the following advice for
> facilitating better participation in the next PPI GA based on our success
> at facilitating online participation.
> 
> The single most important thing is to integrate online participation into
> the GA. Assigning one person to monitor IRC is not adequate. Every single
> delegate attending, where they are technically able, should log into IRC
> and all participate, monitor and share the discussion raised by the remote
> delegates to the real-world meeting.
> 
> On the technical side it is just a matter of maintaining the streams, which
> need to be easily accessible by people with a low technical
> proficiency.For example our congress utili
> ses a cheap & simple audio/video stream combined with web based IRC client
> in one simple web portal. If possible, a projector showing the discussion
> on a screen for all to see would also work well. If there is an issue with
> people who are not members participating in votes, a password protected
> link for a specific official channel can be sent to delegates before the
> GA. Time should be left at the end of each item for lag, people still
> typing etc. You can get a sense of the amount of lag by the delay in the
> online comments and wait accordingly.
> 
> We expect better of Pirate Parties International. An umbrella organisation
> for the world's Pirate Parties needs to embody Pirate principles. We expect
> the organisation to be participatory, not exclusionary. We expect
> democracy, transparency and accountability, all of which seem to be
> currently lacking.
> 
> If this year's GA is not serious about fixing the above problems,
> theNational Council of
> PPAU will have no choice but to propose withdrawing from the organisation at
> our next National Congress.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Simon Frew
> 
> On behalf of Pirate Party Australia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> 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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