Corby, Manchester, Penarth: by-elections for referendum democracy

[INIREF*I&R ~ GB]

*PEOPLE POWER iniref.org


WHY A CAMPAIGN FOR MORE DEMOCRACY?*

Many people agree that giving away your vote at an election once
every few years, then having no say during the years between,
can never produce good democracy.

Adding in some *direct democracy (DD)* enables every citizen who
wants to get involved to take part in deciding about important
public issues while keeping tabs on MPs and government. The
*"tools"* for this have been tried and tested – they include:

*citizens' proposal (initiative) which can lead to a ballot of
the whole electorate

veto-referendum

constitutional referendum

recall of elected officials
*

Politicians are in the main opposed to this type of democracy.
Parties and government act to hinder reform so to achieve
progress will need lobbying and campaigning.

To get these "tools" of democracy introduced we need a *new
Democracy Act* so if we want better democracy we must elect only
MPs who agree to support this sort of reform.


*HOW TO CAMPAIGN*


You can help to promote democracy reform in the run-up to
elections and by-elections.

Three by-elections have been announced and will probably be held
in November 2012, these are:
CORBY <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corby_by-election,_2012>
MANCHESTER CENTRAL
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Central_by-election,_2012>
PENARTH
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_South_and_Penarth_by-election,_2012>

*Ask parliamentary candidates to **(if elected) **support or
introduce a new Bill for direct democracy in the House of Commons. *

You can write to or 'phone candidates, attend "hustings"
meetings or MP surgeries and make suggestions, contact local
news media and radio, use Internet, Facebook and Co. to ask
friends and contacts for support and so on.

Please let us know via in...@iniref.org how candidates or sitting
MPs react.

See our *ELECTION GUIDE <http://www.iniref.org/carta.htm>* for
more ideas, tactics, ways to contact politicians etc.. Also for
NON-VOTERS and UNDECIDED

Much background info. may be found at index
<http://www.iniref.org> and latest
<http://www.iniref.org/latest.html>

FACEBOOK BAN
Our DD Campaign page has been suspended by Facebook for no good
reason. Please spread this appeal via Facebook and other social
networks (please make sure that the hyperlinks appear -- you can
ask INIREF for technical help).

FLYER TO PRINT <http://www.iniref.org/power.pdf> AND DISTRIBUTE
ON+OFF-LINE

Contact:
I&R ~ GB Citizens' Initiative and Referendum
Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
http://www.iniref.org

[I&Rgb]

claireo...@googlemail.com wrote:

> Interesting. Which country would you say is best at DD? Could you explain how the citizens' proposal would work. British Governments only holds referenda when they are sure that they can get the answer they want! ;-)

Your point about who decides when to hold a ballot is well made. For
quality of democracy that is crucial. If only governments can decide
when to call a plebiscite then they tend to use this as a means to
manipulate the country and play tactical party games.

I think that in "old Europe", the only country* where the electorate can
instigate a process to change both constitution and "ordinary" law is
Italy. This process has been used for instance to push through the
rights to divorce and abortion, more recently to ban nuclear power.
Going down the scale, there is weaker but still important direct
democracy in Ireland and Denmark, where the people must be given the
final decision in matters of constitution and important international
treaties.

The right of citizens to "instigate" binding referendum is the most
important thing.

A league table showing performance of the UK may be found here
<http://www.iniref.org/introduction.html>

* Apart from Liechtenstein.