| From: | "Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan" <vijayaraghavan.p(at)rediffmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date: | 26 Jun 2007 13:25:18 -0000 |
| Subject: | Re: Re: [WDDM] ATD 200705-04 - Shaking False Democracy to the Core #01 |
Dear Mirek,
I think I understand what Eric's point of view (well brought out in the para you have quoted from Eric's mail). I would like to dwell on it since it has important bearing on how democracy and by inference on how WDDM functions.
Starting with WDDM itself I think many of the members are not in favour of having a executive board. Neither do I think that they approve the charter and its wordings. Yet the charter has been passed by 'democratic' method and everyone is expected to go along with this 'democratic' decision. This kind of 'democracy' may explain why there is poor participation of members.
Again, when the formation of the executive board is itself not to their liking, members are asked to vote on whether there should be separate discussion board for executive members where the rest of the members are allowed only to 'watch' but cannot take part in the discussions. This is the way the present day 'democracy' functions - world-wide.
If we are aiming at true democracy then it is a must that at the WDDM level every member should be a equal and should have equal say in its proceedings, if he chooses to. Only then can we hope to usher in true democracy.
Thus voting 'no' or 'abstain' would carry meaning only where all are equals. A group of people cannot claim 'privileged status' and still claim to be democratic just by following 'democratic' means of taking decisions.
PVR
On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 MKolar wrote :
>Eric, but what prevents you to vote NO if you are nor comfortable with the wording of an issue? This will make your vote to be counted, and may help to force the issue revisited if enough people vote the same way as you.
>I am only proposing to abstain (and thus leave the decision to others) if you have no problem with the wording of an issue/proposal, have no opinion on the issue, and can live with either result of this voting. What is wrong with that?
>Mirek
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>>Do note that, on these wordings, even those who participate in the discussion, but who could not, in good conscience, vote because of the wordings of the issues are disenfranchised. Although this procedure is widely used by false democracy, it is particularly bad for any organisation or community that aspires to be a true democracy. This is a mechanism that enables a small minority who are in control of the voting processes to go through the motion of open and public discussion and then put up all the vote choices that could have consequences not acceptable to some or even many of the participants in the discussion. Only the votes of those who vote are counted.
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