Gadhafi of Australia

In the face of avalanche of criticism for lack of transparency, dictatorial practices and hidden agendas, the Wikileaks party issued rather laughable clarification. Today I saw the following on the Facebook page of the party : “Just a quickie to announce that there are now 3 ladies responsible for the Wikileaks Party social media.. Alice from the Melbourne Office, Mel from Melbourne and myself, Bree from Geelong have been asked by John Shipton to share the burden. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Gail Malone for her wonderful work over the last 18 months and enjoy your time off!! John has also asked the 3 of us to write a little bit about ourselves so that will come over the next week”. (see Wikileaksparty on Facebook at 15 March).

Please stop laughing.

Yes, John can do everything. He is the CEO. He is also the party spokesperson who speaks to media, at events and rallies. He also is the accountant that keeps all invoices and financial matters. He is the tourist that travels overseas on behalf of the party for every mission the party was invited to participate in. And he is the political expert that writes policies, chooses candidates and decides preference deals. Lastly, he is also the receptionist who makes and answers all phone calls.

He is real political superman, despite his limited intellectual capabilities.

That reminds me of the late Gadhafi of Libya. Even his tactics are similar to Gadhafi’s.

When Gadhafi was faced with challenges of the lack of elections and democratic process his solution was simple. He declared himself to be “the revolution leader” and resigned from presidency. He even abolished presidency and adopted new system with no president nor prime minister. The system was based on “revolution leader” who is historically one, and cannot be changed. And it is true. The leader of September revolution was Gadhafi. So how can you change history!!!

And in Wikileaks party, the same is true. If you ask John Shipton about transparency, democratic process in decision making process and respect constitution, he will answer you in one word “Wikileaks brand was created by Julian, and he is free to do whatever he wants with that brand”... the same “revolution leader” argument.

And if you argue with Gadhafi, he would have told you that “opponents are CIA agents trying to sabotage the revolution”.

When half of NC resigned last August in the wake of John Shipton’s decision to preference Neo-Nazi parties ahead of other progressive, semi-progressive or centre parties, he accused them of being CIA agents trying to destroy the “brand”... and yesterday and in the wake of my public resignation and criticism of the Shipton’s “convenient store management style” of the party, he came to our table on the rally and accused me of being ASIO agent who are trying to destroy the brand... Can you see the similarities!!!

Well… the announcement of appointing 3 ladies to manage WLP social media has done nothing to improve transparency and democratic process inside the party. No one knows how the decision was made to appoint them, who took the decision and who will manage and evaluate the work of these ladies…

Gadhafi invented recurrent tricks to silence the wave after wave of criticism and lack of transparency. The original Gadhafi usually came with all sorts of naïve justifications… including funny ones that were made jokes later on to convince kids to eat their dinner… The same with our Australian Gadhafi…

This does not mean that I support what happened 2 years ago in Libya. On the contrary. I opposed NATO attack on Libya to remove Gadhafi… by this way…

(This article was published originally 2 weeks ago)