[p2p-research] 10 days to go... SUPPORTING Smari McCarthy's P2P Electoral Candidacy for the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly

Wed Nov 17 14:48:16 CET 2010

Dear Smari,

of course, I want to fully support you on this, but I have a serious issue
of timing, I just arrived in buenos aires, somewhat in a crisis mode as
something went wrong with the coordination, no pick up and no reservation at
the stated hotel, I need to solve this today, somewhat stressed you'll
understand, then, tomorrow, there is the keynote and 2 days of conferencing,
it's hard to say how much time I have.

Most quickly, what I can do is just re-use what you write now, first at
Ning, wait for someone to re-write it with some info about YOU, I can then
always add a paragraph about why this is a truly historical occasion (a true
p2p candidate, broader than single-issue oriented Pirate Party) then we
publish it on the blog, and once it is there, we can repeat a few rounds of
facebooking/twittering around the link,

If you want us to do more, feel free to ask, we'll try our best

As I said, for me, it's just bad timing when I'm on the road like this,

I copied the list, in the hope and confidence that others on the list agree
to support you even more, but I guess best is if you can provide material we
can work around by adding a supportive paragraph,

Don't hesitate to ask for anything, the worse that can happen is that people
say no thanks <g>

Michel

2010/11/17 Smári McCarthy <smari at immi.is>

> Hi Michel, Simona,
>
>  In reference to our conversation in Barcelona about my candidacy for
> the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly, I'm thinking that it's about time
> to invoke the P2P culture and try and rally some external awareness and
> support.
>
>  What I'd suggest is if we can draft some kind of letter of endorsement
> from the P2P community and get a bunch of signatures, then I could wave
> that around here.
>
>  A slightly more involved but potentially useful thing would be some
> kind of video clip, just a talking heads thing, with somebody speaking
> about the importance of understanding of networked societies and that
> this understanding be incorporated into modern state structure.
>
>  And then of course there's the easiest thing to do, which is to click
> the "like" button on my Facebook page. 97% of Icelandic adults use
> Facebook and various sites are using Facebook ranking as a measure of
> popularity, despite it being an incredibly skewed estimate.
>
> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Smari-McCarthy-a-stjornlagabing/161452417212255?ref=ts
>
>  Michel, could I request that you take initiative on this on the list?
> I can provide you with background information but I do feel very awkward
> about asking people to support me. :P
>
>  Here's some initial background [sharable]:
>
> ----------------------
>
>  In 1874 Iceland received its first constitution from the Danish king
> as a result of popular demand for increased home-rule. In 1918 the
> country became sovereign under the Danish crown, and in 1920 a new
> constitution to this effect was enacted.
>
>  In 1944, after being disconnected with Denmark for over a year,
> Iceland proclaimed independence. A temporary constitution, mostly based
> on the constitution of 1920, was accepted, with an article stating that
> it should be renewed within the year.
>
>  Now 66 years have passed without the constitution being reevaluated.
>
>  After the financial crash of 2008 the Icelandic people, understanding
> the need for democratic reform as well as economic reform, started to
> make demands for a constitutional assembly. After the government
> collapsed in early 2009 the new government coalition of the Social
> Democrat Party and the Left-Green Party agreed to organize a
> constitutional assembly, although for many months this idea looked like
> it would be buried.
>
>  In late October 2009 a national assembly was held in Iceland, where
> 1500 people were randomly selected from the census to work over the
> course of a day to create a new set of guiding principles for Iceland.
> In the aftermath it was decided in parliament that the popular demand
> for a constitutional assembly was so great that the issue could no
> longer be ignored.
>
>  On June 25th 2010 law 90/2010 was enacted creating a mandate for
> general elections for a constitutional assembly consisting of 25-31
> nonpartisan individuals, based on single transferable vote in addition
> to a gender quota rule. The elections for this assembly are to be held
> on November 27th 2010, 10 days from now.
>
>  The electorate is the roughly 228000 voters in Iceland, and there are
> 523 individual candidates running in the election, all as individuals
> although some have known connections with special interest groups,
> political parties, and such. These relationships have been mapped by
> various websites. Various other websites provide filtering mechanisms of
> various sorts in order to help people weed out the best 25 candidates to
> vote for.
>
>  After the elections the assembly will convene in February 2011 and
> operate for 2-4 months during that year to draft a new constitution and
> propose it to parliament, along with suggested adoption mechanisms and
> protocols. If parliament accepts the new constitution it will be put to
> a referendum.
>
>  There has been an alarming amount of P2P activity in relation to this
> election. Campaigns are primarily being operated through social
> networking sites, with a lot of pressure on candidates not to advertise
> in traditional media. A lot of individuals and organizations have been
> in direct contact with the various candidates in order to provide their
> own arbitrary filters, and in general there is a lot of buzz, but also a
> lot of uncertainty, as the number of candidates and the equidistribution
> of the attention is the source of great confusion.
>
>  To reduce this confusion somewhat and to promote the elections as an
> important step towards more direct democracy, a broad coalition of
> candidates from various political leanings has joined forces to raise
> awareness about the forthcoming elections, operating on amicable
> grounds, and further, there are discussions about creating a "shadow
> assembly" using the Shadow Parliament Project's software and
> organizational mechanisms, in order to facilitate broad discussions
> amongst the general public during the operation time of the assembly.
>
>  In short, it looks like the opportunity for Iceland is great, but
> there are still a number of hurdles. It will be interesting to see the
> results, and hopefully this will lead to a great democratic upheaval,
> promoting and protecting networked societies in the future.
>
> ------------------------------
>
>  Hope you can use some of that in some meaningful way.
>
>     - Smári
>
>
>

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