Voice of Alleey

Verbatim copy of a LinkedInn discussion – pasted here for wider coverage.

Talking about the political situation in Pakistan, the roots of our crisis are 1) Bad form of democracy (representative) where practically few dozen make decisions for millions 2) Corrupt people making their way into the select dozen.

One way to overcome this is to gradually move away towards “Direct democracy,” the best example of which in modern times in Switzerland. It is a form of democracy where everyone’s opinion counts. Switzerland didn’t become member of UN till 2002, because more than 50% always voted against http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2002/09/10/swissun0209010.html

Electronic Direct Democracy is the name given to form of governance that relies on technology to make sure everyone’s heard and counts. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

Coming back to Pakistan, if we can come up with the required technological infrastructure to support EDD in even one large city such as Islamabad, we can inspire a left-wing political movement to implement it.

Imagine you run for a constituency by making us all a promise that you will only act according to the what the EDD system tells you – the people want. It would be a political break-through we all need, and it sounds plausible. Again, all we need is the required infrastructure.