| From: | "Annette Jackson" <aja95799(at)bigpond.net.au> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sat, 2 Jun 2007 11:19:00 +1000 |
| Subject: | Re: [WDDM] Role of executive - Re: [WDDM] Truer Democracy |
Dear PVR,
at least the source of my confusion was clarified: when I read your notes
about "partyless mechanism", I made a mental shortcut and thought that you
automatically mean "representative-less mechanism," because this is how I
understand DD.
All:
I think that we really need to produce a glossary of terms and their
clear definitions first, and use them all in the same way. It seems to me
that right now almost each of us means by Direct Democracy something at
least a little bit different. And then we (or some of us) are also mixing
together the final goal of real democracy (DD), and the transition of the
present system to that goal, and are also using the term DD to denote
various possible intermediate stages of that transition. We all will
naturally (I hope) support any little incremental improvements that bring
us closer to the final goal. So independent representatives (instead of
representatives subjected to party discipline), semi-direct democracy,
I&R are all things that we should support, but not consider a final goal.
I think that an organization promoting DD should use in its internal
dealing strictly the true democracy (the final goal). That is no
decision-making representatives at all, all the decisions are made by all
members (i.e., by all who bother to participate in discussion and voting;
everybody must of course be well informed about all issues to be decided
in advance, those who do not have an opinion on the given issue, will
naturally not participate in voting/decision making on that issue)..
Executive Board will really only execute the decisions of the members,
not make any decisions themselves. But it can of course choose a technical
means (the best technical means for the given task) to realize a decision
made by all. Only such technical "decisions" need not be as a rule
approved by all. But executive should always be accountable, and be ready
to explain all the technical procedures used to implement a decision (of
principle) of all members,
In real life, in a future real democracy, people will of course not vote
on whether an ambulance will be dispatched to a particular address or a
pothole in a certain street filled. Nobody (no advocate of an executive
that is a strict servant of the people and makes no decisions for them)
proposes such a nonsense. But all people will be able to set directly
their priorities: for example how many potholes they can tolerate, and how
short ambulance response time they want, if one has to make trade-offs
between perfect roads and good medical system. All people will together
allocate all the funds available for public spending between various
projects. They may even give some general instructions about procurement
procedures, about minimal wages paid in public services or in companies
hired to do the public projects (fill potholes), and the executive will
then have to find engineering ways and technical means how to fulfil the
directions obtained by all people, for example to make sure that the
ambulance response times are as short as people wanted them, and there are
no more potholes on average that people wanted to tolerate. Then one could
have some control bodies that would check on executive whether they use
the public funds in an efficient way.
So I want a WDDM executive that has no decision powers at all as
explained above, and only executes decisions by all and looks for
technical means how to realize them.
Mirek
Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan wrote:
Dear All,....
I totally agree with what Eric Lim has stated but unfortunately what I
have stated earlier seems to be have been misunderstood. By 'rule by
representatives' I meant what Eric has in mind - 'rule with the consent
of the governed'. I am totally against party politics. But I feel that we
still need to elect our representatives - all of them as independents -
free from any party obligations. This will ensure that we will have a
partyless mechanism within the elected house to carry out the business.
On the other hand Mark as well as many advocating DD are totally against
having anything to do with representatives. Jiri Polak's formulation of
semi-direct democracy also does not fit into it. Mark, kindly clarify
further. Whatever be our differences regarding the nomenclature, we are
united in the spirit of ushering in a truer democracy and ending the
pseudo-democracy that is prevalent. However differences have to be sorted
out to formulate a workable action plan.
Mirek, answering your concern: What I meant was that we do need to put
our trust on representatives who are independents, free from party
obligations, assuming that the partyless mechanism within the elected
house would enable them to act according to their conscience. It is still
possible that some may get elected as independents and after that behave
in a partisan manner favouring a particular political party (kept out of
bounds from the elected house) or group. The press and other pressure
groups would expose such deviations and the voters can always recall
them.
PVR