The new Internet Party is making it incredibly easy for people to join. Perhaps, too easy. It’s innovative new mobile app makes the application process a cinch. The low cost of 99 cents for three years is an extremely low barrier as well. Add these factors together with the fact that the party is receiving mega publicity at the moment, and it’s clear that the party will very quickly gain its required 500 members in order to register with the Electoral Commission. The novelty of joining Dotcom’s latest project will surely ensure success. [Read more below]
But the Internet Party’s membership drive could end up actually being too successful. There is a danger that the party might recruit mischievous members that already belong to other political parties. This has the potential for derailing the direction of the party.
Normally political parties have a rule that prevents members of another party joining. The newly-announced constitution of the Internet Party is unusual for having no such rule.
This means that any member currently involved in, say, the National Party or Act, could entirely legitimately join the Internet Party and become involved in the crucial decision-making processes. In fact, there’d be nothing stopping 1000-such members/activists getting on board the Internet Party and pushing it in a certain direction. For example such rightwing members could push for the fledgling party to adopt a pro-National orientation. Or they could mischievously push it to adopt ridiculous policy positions that would undermine the seriousness of the party. Anything is possible.
Of course, the Internet Party might have declined to include the usual rules against other party members joining under the false belief that because the other parties already have this rule, it would prevent their members getting involved. This would be naïve. Although National, Labour or whatever other party might have such a formal rule, they would have little interest in policing it if their members were carrying out a deep-entry manoeuvre on Dotcom’s project.
In fact those parties wouldn’t even necessarily be aware that their members were joining the Internet Party. Even if the Internet Party wanted to make other parties aware of its membership – which is extremely unlikely – they would be legally prevented from doing so by the Privacy Act.
This would leave the Internet Party with little that it could do to stop such members joining. There would be no legitimate reason for the Internet Party to complain about such members joining. And once they’ve joined, there’s no way of them being legitimately expelled.
This is simply a hypothetical scenario. But if the Internet Party looks like having any electoral success, or indeed if it starts to open up negotiations again with Hone Harawira’s Mana Party, then there would be very good reasons for those partisan activists on the right of politics to want to intervene and derail the party. All it would take is a few hundred of rightwing activists sitting at their computers – or holding their mobile devices – to suddenly have a huge impact on Dotcom’s latest project.
