[p2p-research] p2p/free cultural candidacy for icelandic constitutional assembly, smari mccarthy

[Michel Bauwens]

Our friend smari at http://p2pfoundation.net/Sm%C3%A1ri_McCarthy, is a
candidate for the constitutional assembly in iceland,

Thanks for helping him first of all by 'liking' the facebook link below,
here's some explanation

At the P2P Foundation, we want to fully support Smári
McCarthy<http://www.facebook.com/smarimc>'s candidature. I consider
him, after the more single issue oriented Pirate
Party (whose efforts we also appreciate), to be the first 'full P2P-free
cultural candidate", so this is a historic occasion.

(I know I can't really speak for the P2P Foundation community as a whole, as
we have no representational mechanism, hence the formula, 'we want',
indicating not full certainty)

Smari writes that:

 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

 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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