Events/GA:2013/Proposition 2.5NL

Pirate Party Philosophy by DemocracySquad - Michel L., Alexandre Z., Paul N. et Pierre-Alexandre K.

The political principles guiding the Party are:

Fundamental rights

The Pirate Party defends the fundamental rights. It also whishes to extend its scope in order to increase the general well-being of society.

Here are the main points on which the Party focuses more particularly:

• Right to privacy: This right needs to be reinforced. It consists first and foremost in the right of bodily integrity. It also includes a series of rights of confidentiality: correspondence, data, financial status, identity, localization. These privacy rights can be violated only by a competent authority on the basis of concrete suspicions which must precede the violation. These suspicions must be specific to a serious crime which has already been commited and must concern a particular individual. They cannot be based on simple presumptions.
• Freedom of speech: This does not consist only in the right to say whatever we want, but also in the right to be heard, listened and not censured, whatever the topic may be. We extend freedom of speech to the right to diffuse other’s speech without limitation.
• Free access to knowledge, technology and culture: This must be considered as a fundamental right. The copyrights and patents system currently in place limits artificially the circulation of knowledge, technological innovations, softwares and culture. Consequently, the laws that define them must be deeply reformed.

The instauration of a democracy

One of the main pillars of the Party is the defense of a really democratic political system, i.e. a system wherein the people govern. This must be regarded as opposed to the current representative government system, which cannot be considered as a real democracy.

Democracy implies that, on a voluntary basis, each citizen could in turn govern and be governed by her peers. In order to be effective, such a system requires the existence of a non-exhaustive series of characteristics:

• Sovereignty of the people: The powers are defined and exerted by all the citizens.
• Right of initiative: The right to propose laws.
• Isonomia: Political equality. Equal right for all citizens to exert their political rights.
• Isegoria: Equality in terms of right to express oneself. Right for each citizen to express herself and to make proposition in political assemblies.
• Separation of powers: All types of powers (legislative, judiciary, executive, media, financial, monetary, etc...). are exerted within distinct institutions.
• Political turnover: Political mandates are short and non-renewable. Each citizen has a real possibility to exert a mandate at least one in her lifetime.
• Imperative mandate: All mandated officials exert a mission which is clearly defined in terms of content and duration and must restrict to it. These mandates are revocable and imply full accountability upon their terms.
• Transparency: The decisions and public information are accessible to everyone and presented in such a way as to highlight important elements.
• Non-professionnalization: Politics is a matter for all the citizens and not only for professionals or experts. Debates and laws must be expressed in a language which stays understandable for most people.

In addition to be willing to do everything in its power to reach the long term goal of democracy, the Pirate Party also supports all the measures that move towards an increase of the democratic characteristics within the representative government.

Finally, the Party tries to implement the tools that allow to increase the organisational (digital tools for proposing initiatives, debating, voting, etc...) and structural (decentralization, subsidiarity, etc...) capacities of such a democracy.