It pains me to bring this to the assembly, but after letting it fester for too long, I cannot in good conscience let it go on anymore. To put it simply, the Cabinet just isn’t working. I will try my best to explain the reasons, and I hope my fellow Cabinet members don’t take this as personal attacks on their character.

First, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tim, has become less and less attentive of his responsibilities. He has made promise after promise to take care of things, but then doesn’t deliver. Others have had to pick up the slack, or things just never get done at all. This has occurred even when he wasn’t on a leave of absence.

For example, the Foreign Affairs team was supposed to issue an update to our embassies a month ago; this still hasn’t happened. For another example, the Cabinet, together with Senior Adviser Tsunamy, agreed to create common talking points for important issues to avoid chaos and miscommunication in the NS Gameplay forums. We started this well over a month ago. Tim insisted on writing these himself in his purview as Foreign Affairs Minister, but still has not delivered, despite repeated broken promises and reminders.

Not fulfilling his obligations wouldn’t be as big of an issue as it is on its own (no Minister, myself included, is immune from this failure on occasion), but that’s not nearly where it ends. Cabinet directives are outright ignored if they aren’t in Tim’s interests. For example, I had issued a temporary moratorium on posting on the NS Gameplay forum for any Cabinet Ministers until we figured out those talking points mentioned above. After a mere day, Tim continued to post there as if nothing happened.

Disagreements with Cabinet decisions have also been a serious problem There have been several instances where Tim disagrees with something and then threatens to take the most nuclear action possible to get his way. For example, the Lazarus liberation project was a very delicate operation that involved working with people our region hasn’t gotten along with. Cormac had some involvement leading up to the liberation. I had misgivings due his treason conviction here, but the liberation was more important than that, and Cormac participating didn’t threaten our own security. That liberation got a lot of people together who aren’t usually seen on the same side of an issue, like us and Osiris, or TRR and the NPO.

However, because of an unrelated personal spat with Cormac, Tim used his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs to unilaterally decide that TSP would not be involved in any way in the liberation effort, if Cormac was involved at all. I had to resolve this conflict, but not without incredible difficulty and backroom deals. The liberation was, from TSP-side, primarily my project. Tim only got involved after the Delegacy was seized, and then used his official position to nearly derail TSP’s important presence because of his problems with Cormac.

The issues with this Cabinet extend beyond the Minister of Foreign Affairs, too. Unfortunately, Escade has also been problematic in her role as Minister of Regional Affairs. While she has done fantastic work and delivers on her promises, there have been numerous issues with her interactions in the NS Gameplay forums and with other regions. Her posts caused diplomatic incidents several times over the past term. When I tried to tell her that ranting on the NS Gameplay forums hurts not only her own image, but the foreign affairs of TSP, things did not really change (or usually only briefly). Over the past three terms, I have had to clean up messes from the NS Gameplay forum too many times to count.

Escade has also had a poor relationship with Somyrion, verging on open disrespect. Despite repeatedly reminding others about how we need to “be on the same team”, this hasn’t translated to how she works with Somyrion. For whatever reason, she has accused Somyrion of being best friends with The Black Hawks, even when the SPSF continued with the policy of not running missions with TBH and that Somyrion has argued quite fervently within the Cabinet in favor of policies that disadvantage TBH.

In general, Escade has a pervasive attitude of vindictiveness and pettiness. If she doesn’t like somebody, she stops at nothing to make disparaging remarks about other people’s work, bending the fabric of reality without reservation. Anything such an individual says is absurdly interpreted as malice; anything such an individual has done is relativized to meaningless. Arguing with logic is useless, as realities will just continue to be bent at will to suit the narrative at that moment.

All of this has caused in-fighting in the Cabinet, which stalls all of our work and creates a bad atmosphere.

The stress of this past term has caught up with me. I’ve failed to keep my campaign promise of keeping the region updated on everything. For that, I apologize. But more importantly, as Prime Minister, I haven’t been able to keep the Cabinet functional and operative. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Regional Affairs, I believe, don’t hold respect for me or my position as Prime Minister. So my efforts to keep everything operating smoothly haven’t worked.

When a Cabinet is plagued with infighting, disrespect, spite, and egotistic tendencies, our region isn’t being served the way it should. Accountability is something I’ve been very concerned with, and unfortunately I don’t see any other way to hold the Cabinet accountable for things that the Assembly can’t see. I believe we have done our jobs less effectively because of these problems, and these same problems will further hinder us from doing our jobs in the future.

I hereby submit a Motion of No Confidence in the Cabinet, as per Article XI Section 2 of the Charter.