One of the founding principles of the Citizens' Social Democratic Faction (CSDF) was that, since we are seeking elected office in a democracy, we should be internally democratic in every respect. This was why one of our first actions was to craft our charter almost a year ago, you can read it [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 3:30tcj42u]here[/url:30tcj42u].
Since then we have held weekly meetings, open to all, at which we have discussed CDS politics among ourselves and with representatives of all the other factions and of none. We are alone among the factions in having this record of constructive engagement with CDS politics, openness and transparency and consistency. We have held regular elections for officials within the faction with the position of Secretary-General passing from Moon Adamant, to me and then to Jon Seattle. I think this contrast well with CARE, for example, where Michel seems to exercise almost dictator-like control over his party. It would be inconceivable, for example, for anyone in our faction to resign from the RA and then insist, with no discussion or debate, that no other member of the faction would be able to take the seat. This is what Michel did at the time, the relevant thread is [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 2:30tcj42u]here[/url:30tcj42u]. (Fortunately, our Constitution provides guarantees for voters against this kind of arbitrary diktat and CARE voters were represented in the RA subsequently by other members of the faction).
The CSDF election manifesto was formed through an iterative process of discussion at two CSDF election meetings, a number of email interactions and was drafted largely by myself (under instruction from the meetings) with contributions by other CSDF members. How were the other faction manifestos developed? Was it in such an open, democratic fashion?