Dutch political party sets up online manifesto

27 Mar 2008 | 09:47 GMT

By Sylvie Barak

A DUTCH POLITICAL party calling itself “Trots op Nederland” (“proud of the Netherlands”) has apparently delayed the release of its political manifesto, because it’s still be written; by the public, online, in wiki format.

The party, led by Dutch independent MP Rita Verdonk, is preparing to launch a website which will purportedly ask the public to vote on what its policies should be, and then write them up in an online, wiki style, forum which will become the party manifesto. The site aims to bring people together to co-create political strategy seeing as they will be the ones affected by that strategy should the party win in upcoming elections.

The policy seems to be in keeping with previous statements given by Rita Verdonk, who said in an interview to Dutch news source Volkskrant last year that ‘Ordinary people have wonderful ideas,’ adding, ‘People can persuade me. I’m a good listener.”

But some critics have slammed the idea as belittling the complexities of the processes that regularly go into the crystallisation of political manifestos and party policies. They claim that manifestos are less about promising optimum strategies and more about being the outcome of political processes that have thoroughly weighed up the pros and cons of difficult decisions.

It is also argued that the wiki manifesto would make politicians slightly redundant, but one has to wonder whether this would necessarily be such a terrible thing. Maybe it should be decided with an online poll.

It should also be remembered that members of the public tend to run amok when confronted with a Wiki, leading to headlines such as 'Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of American independence'. µ

L’Inq
The Next Web

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007