The witnesses are hypocrites that took an oath to never freeze stake.

I believe you once made a long post The Flawed "Witnesses Started This Argument explaining why it is OK to freeze stake. Since you believe that Code is not law then there s no problem here. I remember when former witnesses posted publicly way back that they will never touche Inc stake ... I wonder why they didn't stand by their oath, maybe something changed, or maybe people are just hypocrite and used to having double standards and unconditional support ... seems like you have a new war that you need to fight on the other side too.

Anyway, we will honor that other, nothing can be done now until we have the time to reflect such a change and progress on the code (Fixing the governance), but we can't really do that while the ship is sinking. Think of it like martial law, we need to secure the chain and the ecosystem first.

They were against downvotes until they came into power.

Again, what do you mean by THEY. What you are assuming here is incorrect

They have no real power, they only have the proxy power of the one account that controls this entire network.

A bit confused here, you are saying that they don't have power, then you say they only have X power. I thought you said this is a DPOS. This feels more like having power from X is good and great, but having power from Y is bad and evil. Power is power, regardless of how you want to portray it. What do you want exactly? That each witness buys 30 million Steem and votes for himself?

ask for permission

As I said, it's a DPOS, your feelings or ideas do not matter, the only thing that matters is your stake.