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2019 elections: divide or unite the alternative political community

PS Pat Seynaeve Public Seen by 17

My opinion is that it is better to collectively join DIEM25. It is a well organised platform where the pirates could fully join with, together with other small groups, as an alternative against an emerging nationalistic alt-right front. Forget about party-bound self-interest and invest in a common alternative that invites other progressives to counterbalance the short-sighted self-interest sponsored by Steve Bannon.

J

Josse Tue 11 Dec 2018 11:12PM

I can not agree. Diem25 with or without us is not going to be much different. There are different people working on lists that rethink at least partially democracy: Volt, Diem25, pirates, ... But in order to do that correctly it is more important to be yourself than to go along with others. We don't know what solution will prevail. Consolidation can always come afterwards. We won't magically win.

PS

Pat Seynaeve Wed 12 Dec 2018 3:53AM

Everyone knows that there are electoral thresholds.
If you do not make it, you do not have any say.
When you group together with others who have similar social visions, you are more likely to have your say in a policy.
But when you are convinced that individual profiling is more important than cooperation, I wonder why you are doing politics: To profile yourself or to create partnerships that can change society for the better?

JD

Jelle Debusscher Wed 12 Dec 2018 8:49AM

Can we profile ourselves differently on the regional, national and European level ?
For example reinforcing Diem25 on the European level and not on the others ?
Will Volt be part of Diem25 ?

As it is our mission to lower the treshold to free the way for a more direct form of democracy, we should openly communicate our methodology, ideas and conditions and check if they can be fulfilled by Diem25, Volt, Agora Brussels, Burgerlijst or any other.

Secondly: it is more important to have our ideas implemented than to do this under the Pirateflag, nevertheless the flag offers a clear framework that can be considered as a professional civilian policy model. Also it's free (!!!), open, horizontally structured and build around individual sovereignty within the group(s); these logical conditions form a self-evaluating methodology that helps reinforce civilian policy.

So instead of beforehand forming partnerships we could check if these (party-bound) conditions are met.
Thirdly: forming a partnership before the elections with whomever automatically hollows out our role as informed systemcritics and pushes our brand for the second election in a row out of sight on the 'main stage' (referring to Antwerp), which was a promotional and political 'hinder'.

So I'm not convinced yet to just join Diem25 as a Pirate. Profiling the Pirate Party IS part of the democratic process because it offers the constructive non-partisan voice/vote via documented group-analytic through it's methodology (inherent to the brand).
We are defending after all individual sovereignty on micro and macro-scale so it should be clear the name forms a part of that individuality.
Coöperation is necessary by analyzing/supporting the ideas of other brands (common ground) and by supporting the development of local platforms of civilian participation: MeerDemocratie, AgoraBrussels, ... but the Pirate Party sets here standards for communication. Therefor in my opinion it would be unwise to steer the network this way : a polarizing choice that undermines the independence of the Pirates and the workings of the Party and crews.

  • Possible solution: independent Pirates on other lists / independent persons on Pirate Party lists, this way we can do both ? --> supporting other parties, maximalizing our chance to get the persons in place using the Piratename as a systemcheck?