[pp.int.general] Conflict of interest between national parties and PPI

[Andy Halsall]

I'll just throw in that from the UK side (Where I and Jack were involved in 
the negotiations, we were also limited to what party policy was at the time.  
Our mandate was essentially ensure that the positions we wanted to see in the 
CEEP were included where it matched other party positions and that the policy 
set didn't include positions our membership disagreed with.

I know PPSE and others took the same approach as we spent a lot of time 
reconciling positions and policies.  There were a few implementations of 
policy that were more specific than our own positions, but fell within them 
and of course we had to compromise - which generally meant removal of 
statements, or slimming down of statements within CEEP.

The process was actually very good in that regard, and the end result was 
fairly decent too given it was a negotiated set of policies - for us at least, 
it also meant there was common ground for campaigning with other PPs, as well 
as the policy positions that we presented in the UK as Pirate Party UK policy.

We were certainly not in a position to 'launder' policy, because the direction 
of travel was one way, we couldn't commit the party to policy it's members 
hadn't agreed with.  

This is the same with PPI pronouncements, they won't make it into PPUK policy 
either (unless someone goes through our process for introducing them, and 
members agree), in fact I'm fairly sure we've instructed our delegates (and 
yes, our delegates have been briefed in full when attending PPI conferences) 
to either abstain or vote against these kinds of motions in the past, at least 
under my tenure as int coord because they don't reflect member positions.

Hope that clears up any misconceptions (and obviously as PPUK isn't a PPI 
member, and I am no longer PPUK's int coordinator, this is just a side note).

I'd also probably say that in terms of productive work, CEEP meant pirates got 
together, discusses their respective parties positions, argued the toss on 
various bits and did it online over a period of days. It's the kind of 
cooperation we need more of as a movement, via whatever means, when it is 
appropriate. 

>For clarification: 
>
>The CEEP contained zero content not previously supported by the Swedish
>Pirate Party. I took great pains to ensure that it was considered line
>by line by our entire board, whose 15 members are entrusted to interpret
>policy in the name of the party. That resulted in some major cuts in the
>original proposal. Other cuts was asked for by other parties, so I
>assume that some, if not all, of the other parties took a similar
>approach to the text. 
>
>With that said it is entirely beyond me how anyone could think that
>passing a motion containing a political declaration in the PPI at this
>time would be a sensible thing to do. But as the Swedish pirate party
>never have been a member of PPI, that is not really a concern of ours. 
>
>Best regards, 
>
>Mab 
>
>PPSE 


-- 
Andy Halsall
Pirate Party UK 
PPC for Sheffield Central

+44 (0) 7505111705
+44 (0) 203 422 1330
@ajehals on Twitter

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