How democratic will the Green vote be?

[jjcarroll]

According to Trevor Sargent, the members of the Green Party will decide on whether the Greens go into government or not. Fair enough, and theoretically it would seem to be a good way to empower the members. But given the circumstances of the vote tomorrow, how democratic will the vote be?

If you take your average member, presumably a hard-working PAYE employee like most people in this state, unless they live in Dublin, they will have to get tomorrow afternoon off at the least (not the easiest thing at short notice). They then have to travel to Dublin, where they will get sight of the programme for government from 11 am tomorrow. However unless you have the full day off, or work in the city centre, your opportunity to read the document will be limited. As will your opportunity to partake in the party's debate, remembering that you will have little opportunity to read the document and the only people who will have a good knowledge of the document, are those proposing it.

So, arriving late tomorrow evening in Dublin, say 7:30 or so, without having read the documents in detailed, not having much of a debate, how real will this exercise in empowering the members be?

*This thread is only meant for a discussion of how the vote is carried out, not the actual issue to be voted on*

[edifice.]

It won't. The problem with these conventions is that they are de-facto votes of confidence in leadership as opposed to a democratic debate on the issues at hand. The issue cannot be rrejected without a rejection of the leadership, and hence a crisis, and that is an unfair advantage to the leadership proposal. A bit like another party's mechanisms for 'debating' key issues.

[David Cochrane]

JJ, please, I've repeatedly asked for a limit on people starting new threads, can we please keep it to a single thread?