Bel, you do not want to insert your history into this debate. Nobody even needs to point out the facts about your electoral shenanigans.

Anyways, people do engage in political behavior in TSP. They do get together and form strategies during elections. They do coordinate. You guys aren't fooling anybody when you say you don't or haven't. Just own up to it.

And, no, this isn't "other people do it too"-- it's "this is how politics functions." Like-minded people band together to achieve their preferred outcomes. That's democracy 101. This isn't a technocratic meritocracy. And those who decry how much of politics revolves around the personal have no room to separate themselves from it. Much of the problems in our community stem from the personal desires of powerful people-- Hileville, Tsu, yourself, me. Just because Tsu puts forward an image of the most reasonable person in the room doesn't mean he hasn't acted on personal politics, both to the benefit and detriment of the community. He knows that, deep down.

The bottom line is that Tsu's or Bel's personal distaste for formalized parties doesn't make it okay for him or anybody else to start using the government to control the system. I saw this in the original draft of the Political Parties Act, which would've introduced very heavy-handed laws about when parties can still exist. It turns out my concern over the slippery slope of legislating on parties at all wasn't so overblown. I mean, ffs, I was called treasonous for creating TIL's offsite forums, when the only reason we had an offsite forum was because people didn't want party subforums here!

How would you all be reacting if I counter-proposed monitoring all PM conversations and requiring candidates to submit their Discord conversations, in order to make sure that individuals aren't engaging in "electioneering" that ends up stacking an election? It would be a massive violation of democratic rights. So, too, are the ideas being espoused in this thread.

Yes, it is 100% unreasonable to demand that parties stop being parties until there are more parties around. Shall we also say you aren't allowed to engage in political strategy, until there are enough people in TSP that your influence doesn't stretch far?

This whole debate is f*king ridiculous and embarrassing for this region. We're supposed to front ourselves as NationStates's oldest democratic GCR government, while trying to censor people and ban assemblies, just because you don't like that they're influential? Coming from people who wield an inordinate amount of power and influence in the region, who can literally sit in their positions for years if they wanted to? Y'all telling me I need to do some soul-searching--  you need to do some of your own. Sit down and think about how our current environment was shaped by your own decisions.

I took a shitty environment of forced cohabitation with people who literally conspired twice to ban me from TSP (because "unity!"), and created a party that has delivered a new Charter and new laws. We have created an incubator for new players, giving them support and a friendly environment to develop their own skills and propose ideas. APC has done the same, and goes to great lengths to attract the newest of the new. What, so far, has everybody else done? Where, exactly, are the new TSPers rising through the ranks coming from, if not APC and TIL? From where I'm standing, the people most hostile to political parties haven't done a whole lot in producing regional activity, but they're the ones now blaming parties for not picking up the slack (a job we never asked for, by the way, but have done more than anything else anyways)... (APC/TIL didn't always account for such a large percentage of the active community. And look at the LC now-- not exactly a bastion of new & upcoming players.)

TIL isn't dumb, and neither are APC. We're not going to endorse before seeing campaigns anymore, if official cross-party endorsements happen at all now. Inter-party cooperation is apparently no longer worth it, since it brings the wrath of the heavens down upon us for "stacking" elections. Congrats, you've successfully chilled speech.