Dear Federico Tonini, I agree with your following observation - "We believe the only way to deal with professional politicians is to take votes away from them, and we believe this must start from the bottom and move upwards".
How exactly can we convince the voters to vote for the candidate selected by the local assembly for DD? The average voter would feel that his vote will be wasted if it is cast for an unknown and unproven entity.
Even if the local assembly decides to go ahead and put up its candidate, how exactly is it going to select the candidate? There should be a sound and universally acceptable criterion and it should have enough credibility to convince the voter to vote for.
I think an effective way of doing this is to adopt the 'Troika system' or the 'Triplet system' discussed on the WDDM Forum (under Proposals section). This is a crucial starting point, as everything else in democracy depends on the quality of the elected representative and the credibility of the system that elects him.
I suggest that the movements in Italy and Greece consider making this system the cornerstone of their efforts.
Regards,
Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan (PVR) (thoughVRP or VP sounds better)
On Sat, 6 Sep 2008 03:32:26 +0200 wddm@world-wide-democracy.net wrote Dear PVR (excuse me but I do not understand your name very well). I think you have got to the point, if you had a chance to read my messages to Jiri Polak and the latest mail from George Kokkas, you can see that this is exactly what we are trying to do : we would like to make the newsletter directed from Dr. Polak a kind of safe securing the ideas of DD. As far as useless discussions, I believe they get us nowhere. We have started in Italy a Movement called Democrazia Federale and we want to compete political parties in elections. The same Dr. Kokkas is making in Greece We believe the only way to deal with professional politicians is to take votes away from them, and we believe this must start from the bottom and move upwards. I shall meet Dr. Kokkas in Aarau at the next DD Congress and we shall try to work out an alliance between our Movements into one only European Party. Any other European group is, of course, welcome. Come back for more news. Federico Tonini
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From : "Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan" vijayaraghavan.p(at)rediffmail.com To : wddm@world-wide-democracy.net Cc : Date : 5 Sep 2008 11:55:04 -0000 Subject : [WDDM] Re:[WDDM] Non direct-democracy items One thing that is clear after watching WDDM for nearly a year and a half is that it lacks an Administrator to take policy decisions. It is a good discussion forum with a sprinkling of sarcasm and comedy going with it. Discussion goes round in circles with people rooted in their respective points of view, unaware that all are trying to make the same point from different perspectives. Mirek, I believe, is content with being the web master. Mark having contributed the charter keeps a distance from all discussions. I have not seen Jiri Polak or George Kokkas, who I believe are among the founders, taking part in the discussions. There is nobody who can accommodate the various points of view and yet take forward the WDDM to meaningful action at the global level by utilising the global reach of the internet. PVR