[pp.int.general] Results for Estonian pirates in local elections

[Muriel Rovira Esteva]

Dear Märt,

That's great news, congratulations!   :)

In Catalonia we have a couple of representatives in city councils in
coalition with other parties.

In one case the pirate representative got in the town council and is
in the government group so, since the other party also agreed to
include the pirate principles in their programme, a great deal has
been changed in the town hall transparency, among other things. In
another case the coalition got one seat and they were just sharing the
time (the representatives timely resign after their agreed time), so
the pirate representative just stepped in for the last year, and we
still don't know what will the pirate representative be able to do
there.

There is also a council representative who is a pirate that run for
the elections with a group of citizens, which is not a coalition of
parties but just a list of candidates that might belong or not to
different parties. They have carried out some actions that have had a
massive response from the citizens but, since they are in the
opposition, citizen proposals and protests have sadly had limited
influence on legislation. Hopefully, citizens have realised that and
they will get more seats on the next election.

Greetings,

           Muriel

2013/11/24 Märt Põder <boamaod at gmail.com>:
> Hi everybody!
>
> One month ago Estonian pirates participated in elections for the first time.
> There is a Pirate Times article covering percentages of the votes by pirate
> candidates and saying some positive things about the fact that we did
> participate [1], but there is more to tell.
>
> First of all the only list where Estonian pirates were involved and which
> got elected was elective coalition Vabakund in second biggest city Tartu.
> Vabakund got three seats of 49 in local council, and as the article rightly
> states Märt Põder (me) and Raul Kübarsepp are replacement candidates if
> someone from Vabakund resigns or suspends the seat. However, we have kind of
> close connection to Vabakund here in Tartu and they are willing to embrace
> lots of pirate stuff in the agenda too, like various things from free
> software to some flavour of digital participative democracy and general
> freedom of information proposals about local library, policies for
> subcultures and their diversity etc. So we don't really need anybody to
> resign to be involved in local politics.
>
> Besides that, as a token of trust Vabakund offered me a position of faction
> advisor which is a paid position funded by the city council. As I am a
> teacher and an author of parts of our national curriculum etc I was also
> appointed to represent Vabakund in education commission.
>
> This is what positions Estonian pirates got from the elections.
>
> But there is also something to tell about Vabakund. It's not a political
> party, it's an elective coalition. So it brands itself as a grassroots
> project that can involve any kind of political activists as long as they are
> fine with the Vabakund manifesto [2]. In the program they state that they
> "will strive to transform Tartu into a paragon of digital involvement" [3]
> which means digital means of participation in politics also between the
> elections. This is where they rely on the support of local pirates and there
> will be projects in pirate spirit leaded by the pirates to support that
> promise.
>
> Actually Tartu is one of the few cities where election coalitions got seats
> beside established political parties. And since Vabakund is a new kind of
> grassroots project, lots of eyes are watching how it will manage in the next
> years. Pirates have already got some positive coverage about their
> involvement and probably there will be more. So generally the involvement in
> Vabakund is a good step forward for the pirates to be taken as a serious
> actor in Estonian politics.
>
> That's how I feel about the result.
>
> Is there anything similar going on in other countries?
>
> Sincerely "etc"
> Märt Põder / PP-EE member of the board
>
> [1]
> http://piratetimes.net/estonian-local-election-results-good-first-showing/
> [2] http://vabakund.ee/en/manifesto
> [3] http://vabakund.ee/en/programme
>
> P. S. And thanks to the other three pirates running for Vabakund: Sven
> Salumets, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild and Andres Laidvee.
>
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