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What I think of the manifesto b…s….

NeddySeagoon wrote tonight that it’ll be hard for him to take seriously the people running for council who are not going to write a manifesto with some points he brought up.

I sincerely find this idea totally wrong, and really makes me shiver, as it reminds me tremendously of Groenig’s Bureaucrats in Futurama.

I don’t even want to enter the points themselves, which are anyway totally political issues, while the Gentoo Council is supposed to be a Technical committee.

The point is, why should the Gentoo Council be elected over what developers write just to get elected? Sorry but if I were to trust politicians based on what they promise during the campaign, well, I’d probably be voting the wrong people. Just like I read about all the candidates when I choose who to vote, the choice for the Council shoul happen on the basis of what candidates actually did since they joined Gentoo.

I sincerely think I’m more serious by just speaking my mind repeatedly on the issues at hand, than someone who might not write at all for 11 months of the year and then writes one essay about all the possible issues Gentoo has. I’m not picking on any candidate at all by the way, I didn’t even checked the previous election results myself.

You want to know what I think about various Gentoo issues? Just skim through myblog. You can easily just look for council and find posts I wrote during my first term (two terms ago), like this or this . If you want you can check what I answered for GWN last year and judge if I did keep myself up on that or not (funny, when that issue was released I wasn’t even online, I was in the ICU :/).

If you vote just on the basis of a manifesto, then I’ll be happy not to have your vote. If I’m not elected, that doesn’t matter. If people I don’t like get elected, well I always have the option of retiring and deciding to employ my time somewhere else, no?

But I care about Gentoo, I hold this project dear, and I’ll do everything I can to make it good and better, even if that means NOT being politically correct at all, and even if it involves controversial issues.

Comments 4
  1. Well, not everyone blogs all the time like you do, some of the nominated people don’t evenhave a blog and don’t voice their opinion in public all the time. So I can understand if someone asks the candidates in general to provide some information so one can make an informed vote (or would you like to vote if all you know from half of the candidates are their names?)Also having a single page with links to the requested information makes it easier for voters to read and compare the opinions of the different candidates, otherwise one would have to extract all that information from various blogs and mail archives manually, which can take a lot of time.

  2. Inviting people to provide a manifesto is not something I have a problem with, but reaching the point of stating that it’s difficult to trust someone to be fit for the role just on the basis of not providing a manifesto, well that’s not something I’m fine with.On the other hand, I admit there is need for some sort of summary. As I said before I vote for politicians I read about them, of course I can’t read _all_ thew newspaper about them.I’d sincerely like if someone who’s not running would start summarising information about people. And of course I welcome anybody who’s interested in ever becoming a council member (or a trustee) to express his/her opinion more often!

  3. Democracy is a political process. I used a political word to describe the ‘sales pitch’ that political candidates traditionally provide.I agree that the council is supposed to be a technical body but it is often involved in setting policy, which is a political task.Reading planet 🙂 I can see we agree in principle about the need to have an informed electorate, even if we differ on how to describe the information.I don’t take manifestos at face value either.

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