Demoex was a new political concept in Sweden – a debut for digital Direct Democracy. From the beginning we experienced a hype. Our concept worked to our great relief. When Parisa Molagholi went up on the podium at the City Council meeting for the first time and argued against the proposal for a sharp rise in political fees, so she spoke against her own interest. She was given a spontaneous round of applause from the visitors that made the Council shiver for a second and so the question went back on remise. We couldn’t have had a better start.
After a few months we began to find its feet. People saw the new voice in the local politics as positive. Even if we only had one mandate so we influenced other parties indirectly. News of Demoex spread via Internet and the website got visitors from countries like the USA, Czech Republic, Brazil, Israel, Egypt and Taiwan etc.
The whole world was longing for a successful joint projects as a counterweight to the dominant individualism. The idea of creating an international organization for Direct Democratic Voting has been alive for a long time. Many visitors encouraged us to work Internationally, while others suggested that we should start a National organization in Sweden. Ourselves, we tried to focus on making it work in practice foremost. It wasn’t that easy. We got the feeling that the ruling parties wanted to bust us. We quickly became aware that politics is no clean and honest game.
Our first self-imposed task was to expose the undemocratic mechanisms and personal harassment in the Council that made many elected to drop out. When our first exercise was debated Parisa forgot to press for approval. Councilor asked insidiously if she insisted on approval? Parisa said no. “Since we have only one proposal, the motion is rejected,” he said, and passed the denial. Our answer was to tell about the ugly trick in the local newspaper, and he responded. We debated the forms of Democracy in our local newspaper Vallentuna Steget in a way that few major newspapers do.
A failure or success? 
June 21, 2010 at 12:23 am |
[…] change was also dramatized. Demoex became a hype. Newspapers wrote a lot when the experiment was new, which created expectations impossible to live […]