Monday 2 June 2008

Internet 2.0, why not Democracy 2.0?

European Reality Check
Internet 2.0, why not Democracy 2.0?
Say No to the Lisbon Treaty – Here’s Why …

It’s time for an EU reality check.

Do we want a Europe that’s forced upon us, a Europe where we have no say, a Europe that is not in the best interests of its people, or do we forge a more democratic Europe with input from its citizens working in conjunction with its leaders. A true public trust.

What we want is a transparent Europe that is for the people. Not a capitalist Europe that can’t balance sustainability with economics or environmental destruction with corporate profits. In the end we only end up hurting ourselves and the future generations who have not been born yet.

Let’s stop being anti-life.

Stop GMO production, stay militarily neutral, promote sustainability and environmental conservation, stop polluting the air, and the water, stop stealing the resources of third world countries, stop killing their people. The resources they have belong to them. Let’s pay a fair price for it. Stand up for what’s right.

Your fore fathers spilt their blood, sacrificing their lives so that you can enjoy freedom from tyranny and oppression. They gave their lives so that you could be free. Through revolution they took the sovereign power from the tyrannical kings and queens and gave it to the people in the form of a constitutional representative democracy. Now we are the Sovereign, we have true democratic people power. Don’t give this power away so easily in the form of the Lisbon Treaty. Holland and France said no to a previous form of it after a heated debate. That’s more than 75 Million people, 1/6 of the citizens of Europe. What is it that they understood?

Do you know what’s in the Treaty. Have you read it? If the people of Ireland say “yes”, and you don’t like living with the result, how are you going to change it. Did you like the result of the Nice treaty? The re-flagging of the Irish Ferries. Do you understand the end game of the European political elite who are pushing for a “yes” vote on the Lisbon Treaty? If we don’t understand what’s in the Treaty, we will certainly know what it’s like to live with its result. Perhaps we will have to pay more taxes or support EU military adventures? Pay for more Nuclear power plants? Perhaps we will have to fight a war started by a future leader in Brussels? Remember with the Lisbon’s treaty version of a United Europe, America only has to make one phone call, not 27 to find partners for another war. Is this what we want? By saying “yes”, do we have a way out? Is electing an EU parliament with no real legislative power the answer? Is giving the EU more sovereign power without political accountability over our lives the answer?

No, what we need is some “push back” on the EU. If the EU can change our constitution from the “top down”, then certainly we can change it from the “bottom up”. What we need is a more improved democracy. Democracy 2.0? Why would we settle for less?

There is another option …

What we need is called “direct democracy”, a democracy where the citizens can gather signatures to force a referendum vote to change the laws that are not in our best interests. To have the power to cause a binding referendum that is created by the people, not the government.

Switzerland has had “direct democracy”, for more than 150 years. Switzerland is a federation of 27 autonomous provinces (the EU has 27 countries) and are considered the most advanced democracy on the planet. (see link below) To the Swiss it’s all about preserving and expanding the citizen’s sovereign power of referendum. They will never give up their right to referendum.

Try to imagine another way.

If the people and not the government had the ability to initiate referendum with a binding outcome, then we can simply let the government do its job, and we could initiate referendum to change what our elected representatives do if we are not happy with the result that they create.

We could add the possibility of citizen initiated referendum to the Irish constitution if we wanted to.

Now imagine how this would impact the European Union.

Ireland with its 4.5 million people is the only country to vote via referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty. This means that Ireland gets to decide the future democratic fate of the 450 million citizens of the European Union.

This means that if we say No, then Brussels has come back to us, the Irish people, to find out “what we will say yes” to. This means that the people of Ireland are in a very strong position to influence the future of Europe, and in a big way, the eventual political outcome of our fragile planet.

The problem is that the Irish government has the power to initiate referendum, and we saw what happened with the Nice treaty vote, when the government did not like your answer, it wasn’t binding until you voted the way they wanted you to.

Switzerland has referendum also. However in Switzerland the people or the constitution and not the government initiate the referendum. And when the people vote it has a binding out come on the government. When the people of Switzerland say NO, it’s NO.

So here’s the deal. If the people of Ireland would have the ability to initiate referendum, then the people would have pushback on EU law. Like I said before, we do not know what the EU endgame is, but will know what it is to live with its result. So if we did not like an EU law, we could then as citizens nullify it through citizen initiated referendum.

The Lisbon Treaty is the last chance to make a stand, if we say yes, then we lose the power of referendum in the future. This is because the Treaty of Lisbon gives the EU the powers to amend it self in other areas not specifically mentioned in the treaty. This means that they could grant themselves the power to legislate away Ireland’s right to referendum.

So let’s defeat the Lisbon Treaty and work for a change to the Irish constitution, add a new expanded referendum power, “direct democracy”, the ability to gather signatures to cause a referendum to “push back” on the EU and local national laws that don’t serve us.

Let’s not give our Sovereign Powers away so easily, Vote “No” on the Lisbon Treaty.

To learn more the use of referendum in Swiss direct democracy:

http://www.swissworld.org/dvd_rom/direct_democracy_2005/index.html


To express your opinion and have more discussion and organize a “direct democracy” change to the Irish constitution:

http://groups.google.ie/group/irish-referendum?hl=en-GB


Send an email to this group: irish-referendum@googlegroups.com