Dear handsome "Che Guevara" Fred, I've been thinking about this the whole morning. Actually your night. What comes first, the party or the principle. Always the chicken and egg conundrum.
I think a party has to base its platform on what they bring to the table. However repugnant or irrelevant it maybe at the time. Sometimes it takes years for their concerns to become representative of the majority, as in the case of the Green party in Germany. They peddled their "environmental platform" for decades before it caught attention at the national level. The fact that once parties are voted into power they routinely deviate from their platform is another matter. This is the ground reality of politics. That they must play it to remain in power, unfortunately more in parliamentary form of government which results in coalitions than in two-party forms of governance. Elisabeth --------------------------------- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But this doesn't mean that a political party can go > about taking any > semi-Fascist approach, and then justify it on the > grounds that this is > what "my peoples want" (as Churchill Alemao is > every-ready to argue). > > How do parties like the Goa Suraj ensure that the > stands they take > aren't those of a tiny coterie, and against the > interest of a > significant segment? As it is political parties have > a serious > problem, given that they run like coteries, without > a chance of a > leadership-change from below. And, no, I'm not > talking only about the > big, bad wolves (aka the 'national' political > parties) that Floriano > is mentioning. Does anyone know of anything but > tokenistic elections > (if at all) amidst the MGP, UPG, UGDP, GLP, BBGP or > any other > caste-based, community-restricted regional political > that you know of? > FN > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org