Motion - Suspension of the normal functioning

Online GA May 2020
1

SUMMARY

This motion has for main purpose to :

  • Act the desire of the members to change our current organization in order to allow us to be more active inside the PPI
  • Not close the General Assembly until it decides to do so
  • Require the Board to proceed to an administrative and financial reform

FIRST PART : ARGUMENTS

Democracy and members involvement

The members of PPI are only voters once a year and, sometime, a bunch of helping hands when an event is organized. The rest of the time, the Board rules, decides, tries to do some things at the same time it tries to do administrative works. It can’t work and, in fact it’s not the role of the board to make things happen. Indeed, the role of a Board is to help that the decisions of the General Assembly become a reality by providing support : a place to talk, a place to vote, some money, gather and share a network
 The Board - even if it has a political role to play - is first and foremost a support.

We are Pirates and we are fighting for more democracy. We have to assume this position and be exigent with ourselves.

We are Pirates and we have common roots and one of those is to go behind the frontiers and being citizens of the world.

We are Pirates, we share values and we wish to achieve the same goals.

But in order to do this goal we need to communicate and decide together. It is time for the members of the PPI to be active, to build their project continuously and decide and make strong move to prove to the world that we are a true and authentic international movement.

Respect the past and imagine the future

In 2012, the General Assembly set up ambitious goals for PPI. They are still actual. But we need to be realistic, the Board by himself can not achieve them and increasing the numbers of its members will not change the situation and we - members - will not have the capacity to do everything even if we work together.

That why we need to have more time and opportunity to decide during the year to debate and to act what PPI’s future will look like, what project we will support, what policies we want to promote.

If we have to respect the past and all the work that have been done we need to face the future.

That is why we need to be able to act our decision even if we are not reaching a perfect consensus. If at some point in front of a subject we are not able to decide we will have to choose. The only solution will be to vote. The world will not wait for us to agree on every point.

A project for a better democracy

The main goal of this motion is to put aside the actual statutes and the current functioning of the PPI. During this time three mechanisms will be put in place :

  • Permanent Assembly : Each member, with the same power of vote as the one given by the statutes for the GA, can propose, construct, vote, decide on every subject that it estimates to be important ;

  • Executive Board : The board conducts the will of the Pirates and its members’ organizations and the changes of the PPI according of the decisions made by the Permanent Assembly. The board doesn’t take decision but provides informed opinions. Its needs to fulfil the wishes of the Permanent Assembly. The Board is the keeper of the durability of PPI as a legal structure ;

  • Change of statutes : During this time, Members and volunteers will work on a re-foundation of the PPI, and obviously its statutes. The main goal of these changes is to protect these new mechanisms : members empowerment. And because we change, we need to discuss the role of the PPI as its core, its purpose. We need to find what we want the PPI to accomplish: a political view of the world.

SECOND PART : LEGAL DISPOSITION

Article 1:

We, members of the PPI, according our will to build an international pirate movement, are acting our common desire to re-build commonly the organization to face the challenges that we will face in the future.

Article 2:

For that purpose :

  1. The Article IX of the Statutes is amended as follow :

    • (1) The General Assembly is the supreme body of Pirate Parties International and is composed of all the Members of that association.
    • (2) The General Assembly is organized in sessions. The General Assembly have to organize at least two sessions per year. Once a year, the General Assembly vote on a calendar that define the frequency of the sessions.
    • (3) The last session of the year is dedicated to vote on the reports, to elect the board members, the Court of Arbitration members and the Lay auditors, and vote the budget for the next year.
    • (4) The General Assembly decides with the majority of the votes, one vote per sovereign state that has at least one Ordinary Member.
    • (5) Member Organizations are represented at any meeting of the General Assembly by delegates not exceeding six from any one Member Organization.
    • (6) The quorum is established at one third of the members.
    • (7) The General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure.
    • (8) Session of the General Assembly are announced at least two weeks prior to the meeting. Board send an formal invitation to all members.

  2. The article XI of the Statutes is amended as follow :

    • (1) All votes and meetings are public
    • (2) Each sovereign state with at least one Ordinary Member shall have one vote
    • (3) Resolutions shall be taken
      • (a) By a simple majority of the sum of the votes of the Ordinary Members present or represented and voting. In the event of a tie, the motion is defeated.
      • (b) Decisions concerning the admission of new Members (section III. paragraph 4), the exclusion of Members (section VII, paragraph 2), the determination of the annual affiliation fee (section XVI, paragraph 1) and the amendment of this Statutes (section XX), shall be passed by a two thirds majority of the votes cast.
    • (4) An Ordinary Member which is unable to be present at a meeting of the General Assembly may vote by proxy given to another Member,
    • (5) The General Assembly use a permanent online vote system that allow transparency, tracking of decision making process and archiving,

Article 3:

The Board is in charge of the organization of the session of the General Assembly regarding the following instruction :

  • a) The first session have to take place before the end of May 2020
  • b) Before the vote, the time for debates will not be less than four weeks in order to allow delegates to translate and communicate the motion to the respective organization
  • c) Member will have to be informed of the dead line to tabling motion at least two weeks before it
  • d) The vote period will not be less than one week
  • e) The tabling and voting platform is Congressus except if the General Assembly changes it. the debates platform is Discourse. Oral debate can be organize if required by at least two members.
  • f) To be added to the agenda, a motion must be support by two members
  • g) Amended must be table one week before the end of the debates. If the writers of the motion do not accept to merge the amendment, the amendment will be vote as a counterproposal.
  • h) The quorum and the majority for the vote are those defined by the Statutes. Quorum is calculated per motion and not for the session.

The present instruction have to be replaced by new Rules of Procedure for the General Assembly.

5 Likes
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Nice idea. But just some remarks. Whatever organisation is not run by Statutes or Rules of Procedure. Such things just give a frame to that very organisation. - TAn organization, no matter which one, benefits from people actively organizing something, getting involved and practically supporting its goal. This does not require a permanent meeting but actions. Anyone can do that. So far, everyone has been invited to do so. This is, of course is voluntary work that nobody can be forced to do. And even telling a board how to work is not possible, because a board organizes its own internal work. Depending on the given capacities and this in consideration of the given goals. jm2c

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I dont think the goal is to say that this solution is sufficient, but better than what’s going on right now. It should be considered good practice to always having a comparative approach in mind rather than an absolute one when giving counter arguments.

There is no perfect organization. Welcoming can be enforce, power repartition can be enforce, transparency can be enforce. Non of them could guaranty participation but all of them can help participation being actually here.

There should not be « voluntary work ». There should only be voluntary positions meeting mandatory work.

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Perhaps it would help to have a way of proposing internationally coordinated works (campaigns), which could be joined by pirate parties from many countries; to develop activities that give us international visibility.

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I understand what the underlined problem is, but I have a problem with how this motion is supposed to solve this, and I do not understand what it is: is this a statutes amendment? is it not? is it just a political motion asking to work on a statute amendment for the next GA?

I also do not understand how the hitherto created PPI Permanent Assembly is supposed to work: is it just a digital GA that stays in session for a whole month at a time?

Please, clarify this stuff.

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i think it means the GA opens and closes then reopens with the newly elected board but we have alternating board membership atm.
But i would go for an open Ga all year around. so with we are faster at decision making,
but completley new statutes is not going to happen.

1 Like
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Countermotion PPDE:

We call the Board to create a working group on creating a permanent online GA that should develop the Rules of Procedure for it until end of March 2020.

8

we could take this first part of the text as a motion it contains no statute changes ?

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proposal; As we cannot vote in the motion “Suspension of the normal functioning” on the GA at 7/8 december2019 we agree to open up a discussion between ppFR, the members of PPI and the board and aim for a soon GA in january/early february to address the issue

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Hi everybody,

If you want some explanation about this motion, which must be discussed before the end of january, you can reach us on the PPFR Discord : https://discord.partipirate.org/

We have a special room “worldwidepirate” : https://discordapp.com/channels/361532024801984513/378183113156853761 for international discussion

Don’t hesitate to ask anything there.

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As one of the writers of the motion, here is some explanations.

Why session ? Because it’s a good solution to create a routine and to give people some marks. They will know that we have 2 or 3 sessions per year and that they are organized the same way every time. This mechanism is strengthen if we vote on a calendar each year.
A permanent yearly GA is not a good idea. The advantage to divide the year in several session is to have break time that allow delegates that are also involve in other positions in their party to not miss something. They will know in advance when their time will be focused on PPI and when they can be focused on their internal businesses.

About the fact that we need to involve people and not be so focused on statutes: I don’t agree with this argument. Actually the rules are note accessible (I mean, it’s difficult to understand all the nuance in them). You can not opposed the following facts: we spend more time trying to find which rule to apply and how to apply it. This creates very long and boring meetings which have for consequences to scare people and discourage them to participate more actively.
If we want to have more people involve in our organization we need to have clear and understandable rules. We won’t attract people if the organization doesn’t run almost automatically.

About the argument saying that we can’t tell the board how to work: yes we can. The board is a executive organ and the GA can totally decides how it works and what it has to do. Saying the opposite is saying that the board has a free rein over the organization that is not compatible with pirate values. The board is accountable to the GA and the GA can decide how the board must act for the governance of the organization.

About the working group: The last working group on this matter was a total disaster. Nobody shows up. Proposing to create a new working group is clearly not a good idea except if you want to change nothing and keep the status quo.

This motion won’t be an obstacle to physical meetings but it will help to improve their quality. Indeed, The time will be focused on really debates and discussions about things that really matter and not on statutes and rules interpretation. But we need to have rules to be sure that we will act as an democratic organization.

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I don’t know - when I read something like:

I have that feeling that this kind of highfaluting language does not fit here, that using ‘Pirate’ with it is kind of silly. There was always that thing that ‘Pirate Party’ was kind of a joke - but it was a joke that was done very seriously and that there were serious things in that joke. Like democracy and the feeling that the internet and the new information technologies are both very useful and also dangerous. And we seriously try to create democratic organizations that use the new information technologies. And it kind of worked - but then when I read texts like the above it all just falls apart. You cannot use that language together with the ironic name.

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Well, we kinda are a serious democratic Party. Second/third largest party in our nation.

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Of course we are serious about various good things. And it kind of works - “we might have a joke name - but we are serious about stuff that others have on their banners but treat like a joke”.

Our problem is about the language - it just does not work to use ‘Pirate’ in this kind of writing as above.
I don’t really know how to fix it.

As a brainstorming idea: maybe we should just use ‘human’ in stead of ‘Pirate’:

15

We could go for Living Beings instead of Humans^^

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Hum 
 and not for Living Stardust ?

1 Like