Piratpartiet, The Swedish Pirate Party, is preparing for its yearly autumn member meeting. This time, the focus is on broadening the political agenda as well as electing six new board members.

The meeting is set to start on October 1 and is held on the party website where members can discuss and vote on the various topics. The autumn meeting is one of two annual, the other being the spring meeting, last held through April-May.

Piratpartiet decided to broaden its politics after the general elections of 2010, and has now worked for almost two years defining where it stands on a number of issues. Earlier this year, the party successfully launched a “broadening blog”, previously covered by Pirate Times, which encouraged members to send in their suggestions and discuss them in the commentaries.

For the autumn meeting, the party’s board has sent in a total of 36 separate political motions, a result of a three-day weekend meeting in Brussels during which hundreds of political positions were debated and voted upon. These suggestions cover everything from health care and research to privacy in schools and libraries.

Both the original list of suggestions and the result after the board meeting were released to the members online, and debates have already started to stir. Henrik Brändén, the board’s secretary, said to Pirate Times:

Many members have thought the suggestions as a whole are good. But most importantly, they have started a discussion. Many members have in multiple channels – before the meeting has even started – expressed what they think is good and bad, and how things can be done better.

Ofcourse everyone doesn’t agree with all the suggestions. But it’s always fun to have a positive and constructive discussion! This is about how to form politics in new areas, and how to get it as good as possible.

On top of the board’s suggestions, we can expect many motions from individual members. In August, a member suggested the concept of “swarm motions” – motions written by a collaborating collective of members, to enhance each other’s work and to keep track of duplicate motions, which occurred in the spring meeting.

The meeting will also elect six new board members, four auditors, and three members to the nominations committee.

About Anton Nordenfur

I’m party organiser for the Swedish Pirate Party, and work as a freelancing writer and translator. I’m primarily interested in research politics and LGBTQ rights, and blog in Swedish over at antonnordenfur.com.

 

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Piratpartiet, The Swedish Pirate Party, is preparing for its yearly autumn member meeting. This time, the focus is on broadening the political agenda as well as electing six new board…