| Teesus | Date: Friday, 2013/08/23, 4:07 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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I am resigning my position on the national council of the WikiLeaks party.There are several reasons for this resignation, detailed below, but they have been simmering for some time. The WikiLeaks party has arguably
suffered serious problems from the outset, being pulled in radically
different directions from its base and membership, on the one hand, and
the figurehead and associates on the other. These contradictions must
eventually resolve themselves, and my resignation today is part of that
resolution.The immediate cause of my resignation, however, is the recent fiasco over senate preferences. The preferences submitted to the Electoral
Commission caused a catastrophic loss to the party, including a great
deal of distress for members and volunteers who I greatly respect. I
have given the party time to put out a statement on the matter, and an
independent review has already been announced. However it was
immediately undermined. In a desperate move, several members of the
council attempted to convene an emergency meeting — to no avail. The
public, and supporters, deserve to know what has happened. As such, I
have written this account myself, alone.Preferences had been a simmering issue for some time. Views differed within the party, but in order to understand what follows, it is
important to note the structure of the party.Under the party constitution, the national council of the party is its governing body, ultimately responsible for its actions and overall
direction. Its decisions are binding on the party. It has 11 members,
including myself — a founding member of WikiLeaks — as well as the
founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and his father John Shipton.At one end of the spectrum of views within the party, I was of the opinion that we should not do any preference deals at all. We should
simply preference the parties in order of our values. We have respect
and goodwill across the spectrum. We are a new party, without a record
of established electoral enemies, without grudges against us, beginners’
goodwill. We did not project a particularly ideological image and so
would not immediately alienate left or right. We could plausibly expect
relatively high preferences across the spectrum – especially from the
Greens, left and libertarian minor parties, and perhaps even other
parties too. If we played our cards right we could perhaps pull off an
historic result like the Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy.
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