Constitutions (was: Re: New-maintainer - STOP THAT SHIT)

[Stefan Nobis <stefan-ml@snobis.de>]

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> writes:

> On 20010115T225112+0100, Stefan Nobis wrote:
> > If the DAM is not legalized in a democratic way then this has nothing to do
> > with democratic.
> 
> There are independent decision-makers in every democracy.  And the
> Constitution does give the developers by way of general resolution power
> to override any decision made by a delegate, including a DAM, which is
> more power over independent decision-makers than most democracies give.

That's not quite correct. The very base of every democratic society is the
diversion of powers, the executive, the legislative and the legal powers. So
you can make a call to the legal powers to override something of the
legislative powers. That's the same as above.

And by the way there are some (many?) democracies that grants plebiscites.

> The current Constitution was accepted in a general vote according to
> its own provisions.

Beware! To accept a constitution in a democratic way dosn't mean that the
constitution itself has democratic elements or constitutes a democracy. For
example if all britain people votes to go back to monarchy, the result will
not be a democracy but a monarchy even if the way is gone in a democratic way.

And even a democratic constitution may have errors. Take for example the
Weimarer constitution in germany (~1920-1933). It was indeed a very democratic
constitution but it lacked some control of powers so Hitler was able to gain
power and establish his tyranny without violating the constitution. (This is
only meant as example that even a democratic constitution doesn't
automatically constitutes a strong and unbreakable democracy -- no offence
intended!)

But i have to admit that i haven't read the debian constitution before i
wrote the quoted mail. So i have to beg your pardon and i have to admit that
what i wrote was pointless.

Nevertheless it seems there are some problems. If someone gets approved
by the DAM very quickly and someone has to wait quite some time and both of
them (and most others) doesn't understand this, the work done by the DAM isn't
done very well. Transparent decisions are very important for a democracy.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.