[ciudadanox]

In Spain, having all this in mind we have created a citizens network in 2013 to force in a short time a real democracy in our country. We are common people, hackers, lawyers, engineers with our jobs but we are very well organized, we have learnt a lot from open source development organizations, we have no investors but we have the best people with us.

We created the party to lobby our institutions and in just 1 year we are growing much faster than expected. This article in NYT was right after we were born http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/is-spains-newes...

We may be wrong but certainly our are proposal for a new democracy is one of the most advanced in the world after years studying examples all around http://partidox.org/basic-information/ (sorry but the information in English is very reduced)

On Monday 25th of May there are European elections and for the first time we will be in the list of candidate parties.

Our fisrt candidate is a "hacker", he is Herve Falciani who since 2009 has been collaborating with numerous European nations by providing information relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.

We have very exciting times ahead and thanks to technology we have new ways of organizations and new ways for pushing changes

[mrobert]

>Our fisrt candidate is a "hacker", he is Herve Falciani who since 2009 has been collaborating with numerous European nations by providing information relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.

So instead of attempting to scale back the mass surveillance state, the candidate embraces it with open arms and knocks on its door with a vaguely-indicative list of nonviolent alleged criminal code violations of 130,000 people whose metadata he's aggregated?

[ciudadanox]

Not exactly, first he was proposed and voted in a open list. His list of evaders, which is not public includes the top bankers and politics in Europe including some of European deputies. His personal goals are to deploy by law in European banks a system he has developed to monitor bank transactions at European level to elaborate a map of money movements to detect tax evaders.

Because of him, governments in Europe have been able to get back millions of euros back

Corruption in Spain is a big problem and politics have never been trusted or respected, he is death treated by looking for the common good which at least is a sign he will never be involved in corruption and he will never hide his head in the attempt to achieve our goals.

[smsm42]

>>> His personal goals are to deploy by law in European banks a system he has developed to monitor bank transactions at European level to elaborate a map of money movements

In other words, complete mass surveillance system, no financial privacy at all for any EU citizen. A commendable goal.

>>> Corruption in Spain is a big problem and politics have never been trusted or respected,

And yet you are building a mass surveillance system which will be controlled by the corrupt politicians, maintained by the corrupt politicians, operated by the corrupt politicians and the corrupt politicians would decide what to do with it next.

>>> which at least is a sign he will never be involved in corruption

Of course, nobody involved in corruption has ever gotten death threats. But you don't even need to corrupt him - why bother if he gives a most powerful instrument - control over every financial transaction - to the politicians, which as you admitted are corrupt? Without any coercion or corruption. Why break into your house if you bring to the thieves the keys from it voluntarily and beg them to take them and be your guest any time they like?

[rett12]

I really don't understand the electorate in Spain. Just looking at how the two main parties took 75% of the vote in 2011 (down from 83%). And it doesn't look like it's going to change. Compare that to Greece (Pasok went from 40% to 8%, Syriza nonexistent 8 years ago almost won) or Italy (with the rise of Grillo's Movimiento 5 Stelle). Does Spain need a new party with a powerful personality at the helm or after all it has become a de facto two party democracy?

[ciudadanox]

Definitely things are different over here, laws are very negative for new organizations but we are in the way of achieving same results by the end of 2015. We have started much later and we have avoid any populism in all ways, we don't want someone like Beppe Grillo leading us because we are organized in network without leaders. Even though they are a great example that citizens well organized can achieved great things aside traditional parties.

Also, since 2008 main parties in Spain had already lost over 10 million votes(in 35 million total) so we know we are in the right place an the right moment.

TV is still the main source of information for people and it's taken completely by main parties. However in social networks we are already winning, in just 1 years we already have more fans than main parties and people talks about us.

We will have to wait until December 2015 to show this change in a election

[rett12]

The problem is that by the end of 2015 the situation in Spain could improve(I really don't see that happening and if it happens is because the improvement in Europe is dragging Spain). Also in the elections of 2011 the main parties lost almost 4 million votes (from 21.5 to 17.8 million). http://resultados.elpais.com/elecciones/generales.html But it's true that the projections seem to show that trend, still both parties get +60% votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_S...

> TV is still the main source of information for people and it's taken completely by main parties. However in social networks we are already winning, in just 1 years we already have more fans than main parties and people talks about us.

Social networks are used mainly by young people, and Spain is an old society.

>(...) because we are organized in network without leaders.

I have yet to see a country without leaders and a large well organized group of anything without leaders. It's really naive.

Nonetheless Spain needs people that starts changing things (like your group), and everything can change by Dec 2015 but I'm not optimistic.

[smsm42]

So, the great achievement of your revolution so far is to help the government extract more money from people that choose to hold their honestly earned money in a country where the government is a little less greedy than yours. And I am supposed to be excited by that, because more government control and less ways to escape it is totally what I would seek, right? Real democracy is not letting people use Swiss bank accounts. Excellent.

[ciudadanox]

No, the people in this list are evaders and many of them involved in corruption cases, the top bankers and biggest companies. The huge debt in Spain could be paid -yearly- by having these tax evaders paying his debts.

About 40 billion euros from Spain are gone to tax havens every year.

The debt has caused continuous cuts in health, education, research, etc and taxes has raised incredibly. Having control on these mechanism used by tax evaders will help to actually reduce taxes

[smsm42]

They did not cause the debt. The government did. The government took money they did not have and spent them. However, you do not parade your biggest accomplishment as "We have discovered 130000 corruption cases" or "We have audited 130000 government records and found multiple cases of waste and fraud which we helped to fix" or "We found 130 million euro spent on crony project and helped redirect them to health and education". No, you say "we helped government to control finances of 130000 citizens and prevented them from using the option of lower tax environment, thus ensuring our government has no competition". You started with supporting the government in oppressing their citizens, not with making the government better. Good start, congratulations.

>>> About 40 billion euros from Spain are gone to tax havens every year.

Of course, the natural thing would be to grab that money. After all, all the money rightfully belongs to the government, right? If there's some money we can't grab, it's not right. I wonder when the people and the whole companies start fleeing - would you also institute exit visas and ban exporting capitals? After all, if somebody - especially somebody with high salary, like software engineer - moves from Spain to, say, Singapore, he deprives Spain of his taxes. Which would lead to higher taxes on those who stay. So we should restrict this thing, right? Let him work at least 30 years to the benefit of the glorious State, and then he can go, maybe.

>>> Having control on these mechanism used by tax evaders will help to actually reduce taxes

It is so fascinating you probably really believe that having government in absolute control of everybody's finances and citizens having no escape to lower-tax environment and thus the government having zero competition in tax-rate market would actually make them drop taxes. And with this kind of naiveté you hope to build a better government. Well, good luck, but I'm not holding my breath. In the best case, you fail. In the worst case, you'll actually succeed and make the government you despise more powerful, more controlling and less accountable.

[jacquesm]

That's all really good. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and a new political party is still constrained by the rules of the old democracy it seeks to displace. So you'll be part of the problem at the same time that you try to solve it, this is a very hairy proposition. Best of luck to you though, you believe in your cause and seem to be of good intentions, it certainly should not end up being a net negative (but the cynic in me can't help but notice that almost every political party/movement out there started out with the noblest of intentions, including the very worst examples of such parties/movements).