A mail for Patti Smith

["F_SANTAMARIA" <F_SANTAMARIA>]

I'm trying to deliver this mail to Yoko Ono and other persons.

I'd like to have sent it also to Patti Smith, whose work and attitude I deeply
admire.



12th December - 2005 - Vitoria Gasteiz (At the Basque Country University
Central Library).

Dear Mrs. Yoko Ono,

Because of a series of motives, the situation of my country, a long series of
personal and professional failures, I've been interested in themes related to
law and politics for the last four years and think in the creation of a
political party at odd moments, sometimes. It  evolved in my dreams from a
nationalist party (in the small region of Galiza, at the Northwest of Spain),
to a national, or rather peninsular party (Spain and Portugal) with federal
branches, and some days ago, thinking again about this here, at Victoria
Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country, it has extended to an almost
utopian creation , but possible, I think, and almost necessary.

The name of the party could be "World reasonable Party on behalf of a
World-wide Democracy". The adjective "reasonable" appears as an allusion to
the first principle of motivation suggested by T.M. Scanlon in a contribution
to the book "Utilitarianism and beyond", Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams,
eds., 1982. According to it, people would act in the first place led by a
drive to reciprocally offer each other reasonable justification of their
conducts. "We have a basic drive to be capable of justifying our actions
before others with reasons that cannot be reasonably rejected - reasonably,
that is to say, once the existence of a drive accepted of finding principles
that other, motivated in a similar way, could not reasonably reject",
according (approximately) to a passage John Rawls quotes in his book
"Political Liberalism" (pg. 80 in the 1st Spanish pocket edition).

In my view (yours and John's too, I guess), political parties, their
structures and even the supranational structures inside of which they operate
lack many guarantees, specially regarding to how and why these structures were
chosen and how they are being used. They contradict, then, this first
principle of T.M. Scanlon. And the methods (the lines of the arguments, the
use of voting, the routine equivalences of always identical economic
variables) they almost exclusively use just seem little serious. Once the end
is chosen, there's the need to apply some specific knowledge, some "scientia",
or "ars", or "technC)" (might be that is what is being done, for evil) ...,
regarding to the principles and the application of which nor "democratic
voting", nor the appeal to badly definited abstract values fit.

In short there would be a need, in the first place, of electing among
world-wide respected theoreticians and and professors of universities and
investigation institutes, (might be also a few practical politicians), the
most interesting attending to the creativity, viability, social reach,
capacity to balance equality and economic growth of their work, who could form
part of a committee that tried to sit down the bases of a world party, a World
Party of Reason on behalf of a World Democracy..., something like this name.
It would run for elections and, when got the power or obtained representation,
would try to equalize laws, methods, structures and work on reasonable
policies.

My knowledge about politics is rather shallow. In a first moment it would be
interesting to devise, I think, something like an:

-         INDEX NECESSARIARUM LEGUM (a "catalogue of the laws which are
indispensable") on one hand,

-         and to take decisions about the best government structures (one or
several), on the other.

Also to reach agreements about which laws shouls remain the same and which
should differ, why, and to which degree.

The same about the government structures.

A world-wide unique Constitution would also be needed. The new party would try
to adopt it, being adhered to the procedures predicted (in this no changes
would be allowed), in each of the countries, or, if this wasn't possible, it
would serve as a reference.

In a second phase it would be essential to choose local experts in each
country or area, to make more specifoic the schemes. Also to promote
affiliation campaigns and the idea in the media.

I have thought it would be convenient that public offices should be imposed
strong salary limitations, having quite normal wages, let's say 2000$ (and/or
deliver to the party or charitable deeds the surplus).

I'm interested in the idea and would like to take part, though refusing any
financial compensation (save train or airplane tickets in case of trips).
2000$ (1800 E, as a matter of fact) is exactly what I gain with my retirement
pension because of a "Permanent Incapacity" for the Profession of Teacher in
Secundary Schools, after a serious dispute with the Spanish local authorities
(the Galician government of the franquist ex-minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne)
in matter of education.

Yours faithfully (and awaiting with other people here, in Victoria Gasteiz,
for some answer),

You can write to:


f_santamaria

[Fernando SantamarC-a Lozano
c/ San Francisco nB: 24 - 2B:
Santiago de Compostela - 15705
A Corunha
Tlf.: [0034]981 58 61 76]

Or call [0034]649 230 655

P.s. There's a big world crisis approaching, it seems. Might be the Party
should just take charge of anticipating how long and how can we manage before
things get truly intimidating and how to prevent this. Also for this end it
would be non dubiously useful getting serious concern.





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