Julian Assange’s Wikileaks Party running mate in Victoria, Leslie Cannold, has resigned as a Wikileaks Party candidate, according to a statement in her name published at Crikey.com (pdf file). Cannold said she expects more resignations soon. This post will soon be updated with analysis of the statement compared with what we know about the controversial Wikileaks decision to preference a fascist party above the Greens in New South Wales:
UPDATE:
1) Cannold states the NSW *and* WA preference decisions were taken against the instructions of the National Council, the governing body of the Wikileaks Party, according to its Constitution. She says she joined with “many of those who are resigning today” to get an immediate and independent review of those decisions, and took “days of battle” to get such a review agreed to.
This indicates that Wikileaks Party registered officer Gail Malone, and Deputy Registered Officer Cassandra Findlay, who we know lodged the offical New South Wales preference form with the Australian Electoral Commission, defied the National Council. It also indicates that WA Senate candidate Gerry Georgatos, and Julian Assange, who have both defended and justified the WA Senate preference arrangements, have placed themselves in open oppositon to the Wikileaks Party National Council. (Listen here to Assange justify the WA preference deal, courtesy of Perth radio station RTR-FM and the Indymedia Perth radio show.
Cannold then states “A member of the party rang two key volunteers in succession” and asked them to go outside the Party’s formal structures:
“In these phone calls, the Council was denigrated and a proposal made to each volunteer in succession that they join with select candidates and Council members in taking direction from other than the National Council”.
Cannold also says a call was also made to a “campaign staffer” saying that the independent review would be neither independent nor held until after the election. Cannold’s response was to resign:
“This is the final straw. As long as I believed there was a chance that democracy, transparency and accountability could prevail in the party I was willing to stay on and fight for it. But where a party member makes a bid to subvert the party’s own processes, asking others to join in a secret, alternative power centre that subverts the properly constituted one, nothing makes sense anymore. This is an unacceptable mode of operation for any organization but even more so for an organization explicitly committed to democracy, transparency and accountability”.
UPDATE: (Thanks to Asher Wolf for pointing out the following link)
Daniel Matthews’ statement of resignation from the National Council of the Wikileaks Party has a very detailed description of the recent degeneration of the Party, including a confirmation that Julian Assange has made public statements in explicit contradiction of the National Council:
The final straw for me was Julian’s explanation of the fiasco on Triple J hack on Tuesday night — after a full day of frantic communication within the party, including to his inbox.
He said the following, in flagrant contradiction of everything that had been happening within the party, going to him and his inbox.
“There was a decision that preferences would be done by the states, by the candidates in the states.”
This is wrong. Preferences decisions were made by the National Council and were binding on the party. It was only in Julian’s proposal that candidates were given free rein over preferencing — and that proposal also gave Julian veto power and reduced the National Council to a sham, and was rejected.
UPDATE: Five more resignations from the Wikileaks Party, including National Council members Sam Castro and Kaz Cochrane, have been announced.
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