Yep, I’m going for it again. Many of you thought I wouldn’t, and for quite some time, I was one of those people.Changing circumstances combined with self-reflection have changed my mind, and if you approach this campaign with an open mind, I’m certain I can change yours as well.



We’re big, we’re strong, and we’re important. There is no denying that. However, we’re not quite at the level that I would consider a “superpower” in the world. We can, and should, change that. That doesn’t mean that we start fully militarizing, or colonizing territories, or get involved in the APC-NPO war, or start flaunting and posturing on the NSGP forum, or any of those things that are, frankly, not consistent with South Pacifican values and traditions. Rather, let’s look inside.

If you’ve ever played Age of Empires II for any length of time, you’ll know that the key to success is not the size of your army, but rather your population. An expert build in that game will have most (>90%) population slots filled by a giant swath of villagers, working together, gathering resources and building improvements. If you’ve ever played Antiyoy on your cell phone, the trick to success there is clearing away forests and claiming gray cells with lots of villagers and building farms everywhere; barons and knights can be built on demand. In the Civilization games, lots of cities making lots of money are the way to go.

The same principles apply here. We are not a region full of warriors. Instead, this wonderful region is called home by some of the finest artists and artisans that have ever graced the NationStates metaverse. If we want to make more of our vast potential, we need to tap into this great well, come together, and start building.


This is where my campaign slogan, a Maori proverb, comes in. Translated literally, it means “with black and with red the work is completed”, referring to the black and red colors used in a lot of Maori artwork. This proverb expresses that many hands working together make a goal possible to achieve, and when I look back at the big meaningful achievements that we have made here in the South Pacific, my belief in this principle is only reinforced. SWAN is the brainchild of our own USoVietnam, but was completed and finished by the help of several working together to draft, edit, tweak, improve, and discuss what needed to be done. After the horrible climate that plagued us last year, the community came together to debate and draft new community standards that will be enacted soon. And right now, in the private halls, all of us together are working on what will become one of the biggest and most substantial reform packages in our region’s vast history.

We have shown, time and time again, that we can achieve great things when we work together. All we need is a spark to get us going, and a sign to point us to the goal.


I’ve previously had the honor of serving as this region’s Prime Minister for a full year, from June 2017 to June 2018. I’m not a stranger to the job. As before, you’ll get to see fast reaction times to developing situations, open communication with the region, continued ministry progress, and regular voice chat AMAs.

In my previous terms, I would only advise the individual ministerial policies, and then help enact whatever the individual ministers decided. For the most part, that will still hold true; however, with the new mandate for Prime Minister powers we passed in September of last year, I won’t shy away from overriding when I consider it detrimental otherwise. I also won’t shy away from openly discussing things I deem as problematic; in hindsight, that could have saved us a significant portion of the trouble we had last year.

The new mandate also helps the Prime Minister in establishing new inter-ministerial projects, and as you’ll see below, I have quite a lot planned there.


One of the first steps will be establishing a project board in a sub-forum dedicated to it. There, we will discuss what we want and need to do, discuss how we could do it, and find the people to do it. This would be a global project board, not one run by only MoRA, and accessible to everyone. NationStates-based communities such as ours are, in my opinion, not large enough to necessitate much subdivision and having such a space openly available, visible to all, and noticed by all that use the forum’s “View New Posts” feature will help drive activity towards the projects.


One of the many benefits of the SWAN program is our increased and increasing power and influence in the World Assembly. For many years, we’ve discussed having a WA ministry that deals with the General Assembly and Security Council chambers, but never got down to doing it due to a fundamental chicken-and-egg problem: We didn’t have somebody fostering a WA-conscious community within our region, and we didn’t have a WA-conscious community from which a caretaker or minister or such could emerge.

We can break that cycle! First, we can design and have somebody implement a piece of software that queries resolutions on NationStates that have reached quorum, and automatically create threads in our cobweb-riddled WA subforum. Second, we can then look at regulars in the General Assembly that happen to reside in the South Pacific, and encourage them to join our forum to debate and state their opinions on pending resolutions. With these steps, a WA-conscious subcommunity will form over time. This is a great example of how we can use collaborative projects to set things into motion that, once rolling, will keep rolling on their own.

Furthermore, I will support efforts to start and/or enter into a new WA alliance.


I am very happy with our place in the world. We are an unaligned region, defender-leaning but by no means part of Defenderdom, opposed to the Independence Manifesto and the regions ensnared by its ideology, and we value regional sovereignty here and abroad. We don’t need to change that. We have a great selection of allies as well, with several interesting regions we may want to enter formal relations on the horizon as well.

We should have no part in the war countering the New Pacific Order, and I have and will stand strong against the continued efforts of outside regions trying to coerce us into entering that war. We are not affected by that war or its proximate causes, and should not get entangled in it.

At the moment, ambassadorial reports are only given to the Foreign Affairs department, but fellow South Pacificans should be informed on what goes on in the world as well. I support a change of paradigm by which the reports are either open outright, or collated and released regularly, augmented with additional information explaining why something could be relevant to TSP. I additionally support the appointment of an ambassador for the wider NationStates Gameplay happenings for the same reasons. I will work with the Foreign Affairs minister to figure out the best way going forward.


I’m not a culture guy, so setting up events and festivals are not something I will likely get involved in, or interfere with, beyond technical assistance. I do support MoRA efforts to make events or festivals happen.

Integration and retention efforts need to be maintained and expanded, and I will push for that, both directly within the ministry and with projects. One of these projects will address the comments by many game-siders that find the forum daunting, with too many sub-forums in weird places. Working together with those gamesiders and our administrators to find a better, leaner, and more intuitive forum structure (and possibly Discord channel structure) going forward is a perfect community project.

It is my conviction that the closed-door approach to MoRA practiced traditionally (including by myself during my single term as MoRA in 2016) needs to go, replaced with a more open model that invites collaboration by anyone, formal ministry member or not. The project board will help with that. There are times where things need to happen behind a closed door, but those should be the exception rather than the rule.


Our South Pacific Special Forces took a particularly large hit with the general slowdown in R/D activity, because we frequently took part (often in a leading capacity) in collaborative operations with others. While we’re not huge now, we’re functional.

SPSF is best served by working on guides. We have some exceptionally skilled people in our military, but the knowledge is stuck in heads and various Discord channels. We need to put that down into guides to ease training and to have a general reference manual, both for soldiers to use when they’re deployed, and for older people that may have forgotten a detail or two. Again, these would be community projects for everybody with knowledge of military gameplay.

To get us moving more, we should work more with the North Pacific Army, who has been a fantastic partner during this past term and is more than willing to do joint operations with us again. Additionally, we should consider collaborating more with Antifa, which has recently been re-established by Vippertooth33 of the commended non-ideological MT Army as a collaborative force against fascism and nazism, in line with our tradition of moving against those espousing hateful ideologies.


USoVietnam once summarized a wonderful vision of a “New Deal”. While nothing in that vision is necessarily new or ground-breaking, it’s the only time I’m aware of that somebody took the time to put it together in such a cogent and poignant fashion in the context of the South Pacific. However, he himself described the requirements to make that happen as “too good to be true”.

I disagree with that assessment. It is my impression that we all agree with, and appreciate, the “New Deal” vision, and with the help of the project boards and collaborative methods, we can do it. Even if we only implement a fraction of that New Deal, it will be a great boon to our region for years to come.


Previous Cabinets (mine included) have been very, very bad at being compliant with the Sunshine Act, particularly since, and due to, the rise of Discord as a communication platform. While the Sunshine Act now has provisions for discussions arising from and being conducted there, it’s often and easily forgotten. So, we’re just not going to do that. The channel #cabinet-office will be for pinging other ministers, and nothing more. There will be no discussion there. Everything will be on the forums, automatically documented. Period. No exceptions or excuses.

Unlike my previous Cabinets, we’ll have a larger selection of individuals participating in it. I intend to appoint 1-2 senior advisors to the Cabinet to help guide us Ministers in our decision making. Furthermore, each Ministry receives one internship slot to foster a new generation of great Cabinet ministers.

If I have to be absent for a few days, or have to recuse myself on a matter, I will appoint the senior-most Cabinet Minister to be acting Prime Minister in my stead.


As mentioned before, by enforcing strict usage of the forum rather than Discord as a communication medium, compliance with the Sunshine Act will be automatically easier and better.

Furthermore, the “Cabinet Twitter” policy started under Serres will be continued and expanded, albeit in a slightly modified fashion to help it become more active. Rather than having ministers post their own updates after receiving approval from the rest, they’ll be posted in the Cabinet Office and then reposted by me to the public. For this, I ask the help of South Pacificans like IoU and others who like to hold the government’s feet to the fire: Make sure that no week goes by where the Cabinet doesn’t update the region on its doing at least twice!


My main region is the South Pacific, and that won’t change. I don’t want to get into the situation again that I had during my previous tenure, where I was serving both as Prime Minister of TSP and First Warden of the Order of the Grey Wardens. It’s a strain, and it turned out to be a greater conflict than I envisioned, requiring some hefty juggling at times and resulting in some negative PR for myself, for TGW, and even worse, for TSP. That will not happen again.

I still do have some minor CoIs to declare. I am a citizen in Lazarus and don’t intend to enter its political government. Furthermore, I serve as Chief Justice in Mariner Trench, the companion region to the MT Army. For both, I see the potential for conflicts as extremely low and I’d rather resign from either of those than do the sort of gymnastics I had done previously while I was juggling my leading positions in TSP and TGW.


This campaign is not about me. This campaign is about the South Pacific, our beautiful and lovely home, and I hope that, once more, you allow me lead all of us together towards the greater days to come. Come and join me, TSP. Let’s get to work.