[Chapter-delegates] Pacific Islands Regional Advisor bannedfrom major World IT Meeting

[Patrick Vande Walle]

Jeffrey,

I know this is common in Northern America and most probably other
countries but it is not an universal behaviour.

On the European continent,  private funding of electoral campaigns is
generally seen as a form of corruption. As an example, in France and in
Belgium, there have been major cases where influent politicians have
been sentenced to jail. Usually, political parties get allocated a
certain amount of money by the state to cover the cost of their election
campaign. If a politician wants to pay for a part of his/her campaign,
he/she has to prove it comes from his/her own pocket.

In such a system, organized groups of concerned citizens can be heard by
politicians. Add to that it is usually more helpful to brief the
politician's staff with objective information rather than crying slogans
at demonstrations. A good example of this is that ISOC was able to
educate some governements at WSIS, to the point that many do not claim
anymore they want a DNS root server in their own country, now that they
know how DNS works.

Best regards,

Patrick Vande Walle

Jeffrey Sherman wrote:

>Perhaps I'm being cynical here, but at least here in the US, a good many
>(if not most) politicians are most interested in fundraising.  You have
>to get elected first and then you have to get reelected at the end of
>your term.  In order to do that, you need money - big money.
>
>It isn't just a matter of ISOC chapters not educating the politicians;
>it is that the politicians don't really care about being educated...
>they just want to please their corporate donors so they can stay in
>office.
>  
>