Esteemed comrades,

The office of the Chair of the Assembly performs a vital role in our legislature, one which requires the efficient execution of its duties to ensure that the Coalition continues on an even keel and that participation in the legislature is not hindered, slowed-down or otherwise diminished.  In recent months, we have become increasingly frustrated with the manner in which this office is being carried out, with a pace and level of efficiency which would not have been tolerated in previous years.  As such, we felt it incumbent upon us to make the following statement, laying out all the evidence we have amassed to demonstrate the urgent need for action if we want the Assembly to return to being the respected institution we have known it to be.

Under the current Chair, the Assembly has seen consistently long delays in its operation, often measuring weeks or even months. This is by no means normal for the Assembly and the average delay far exceeds that of most previous chairs. Proposals have sat for nearly a month before being brought to vote, and in one case a completed vote sat for over three months before finally being closed by Deputy Chair Ryccia. This is an utterly unacceptable pace for the legislature of a feeder region, which must maintain high levels of involvement and engagement for an ever-growing influx of new players.. 

Delay in Hours	Motion Delay	Close Delay	Average Delay
Omega/Ryccia	128.13	228.78	183.03
Awe (December 2015)	47.2	41	44.1
Farengeto (May-June 2015)	24.8	15.2	20
Aramanchovia (April 2015)	74.2	21.2	47.7

A strong Deputy Chair can make a great difference  in the operation of the Assembly, but an unelected Deputy should not be responsible for the majority of the elected Chair’s work. In recent months we have seen a vastly disproportionate amount of the work of the Chair performed by Deputy Chair Ryccia. Since the end of October, the Deputy Chair has been responsible for opening and closing nearly every vote held in the Assembly, with the exception of a mere three votes closed by the Chair. This should not be seen as criticism of the Deputy Chair themselves. Though many of their times still exceed the normal legislative pace, they have performed far more than should be expected of their role. Allowing the workload to become so unbalanced is, however, a completely inappropriate action from an official elected to perform these duties.

Large delays, as well as gross negligence, can also be seen in the handling of legislator applications and removals. The roster was recalculated by Roavin (which any legislator is welcome and encouraged to independently check), using the data from the Legislator application thread, the Leave of Absence thread, and the various voting threads. The discrepancies between the original and the recalculated roster include the following:

• A Leave of Absence for Omega from Nov 4 to Nov 14 2016 which was never documented in the Leave of Absence thread; furthermore, a Leave of Absence requested by Muncipio de Neiva and subsequently accepted from Sep 24 to Sep 26 2016 was never entered into the roster.
  Three persons were accepted as legislators but never added to the roster.
  
• Legislator and Leave of Absence acceptances have been, just as votes, subject to long delays. Recent Leave of Absences, now extant for 11 and 15 days respectively, were never added to the roster. One Legislator application (SquidySquid) was only accepted after three months, while delays of one to two weeks are not uncommon.
  
• There are three persons that should have lost their legislator status due to a failure to vote (Tim, Qwert, and lamb) that have continued to vote for months afterwards (which should render these votes as invalid). Other persons should have lost their legislator status but never have, though they did not vote in that time.
  
• The law states that legislators shall lose their status after a failure to vote in three non-consecutive votes. Considering that there were no chains of successive consecutive votes since the start of Omega’s first term (presumably owing to the motion delay mentioned earlier), the votes can be considered to fall into 10 non-consecutive blocs, with which continued legislator eligibility can be trivially checked - any legislator that does not vote in any of the votes assigned to a block for three consecutive blocks without a Leave of Absence must be removed. The roster by Omega does not reflect this whatsoever, with 5 such blocks that, in part, appear to have been assigned seemingly at random. Note that in a properly maintained roster, such blocks would not have been formed but rather each vote would have been inserted upon closing and flagged with whether they overlap or not; the choice of using blocks for the recalculation instead was made in the interest of saving time.
  

In addition to these failings, we must also note the failure of the current Chair to consistently and accurately maintain the legal archives of the Coalition; for example, an amendment to the Election Act passed by the Assembly on the 12th of September 2016 never made it onto the statute books. For these reasons, we cannot say with any real confidence what is and isn’t law.

In light of these facts, we do not see that it is tenable for the South Pacific's highest legislative institution to continue to be managed in such an inadequate fashion. We are the third largest feeder and the oldest democracy in the game, and we must ensure that this institution, central to our paradigm of governance for nearly 14 years, is held to the highest possible standard. We do this out of respect for our legacy, our culture, our citizens old and new, as well as our excellent standing and outward image across the NationStates universe. For this reason, we hereby petition for a vote to recall the Chair of the Assembly, Omega on the grounds of dereliction of duty.

Signed,

Roavin
Belschaft
Farengeto
Seraph

Links:
Assembly voting delays
Recalculated Roster
Recalculated Legislator removals

(This post was last modified: 02-01-2017, 08:38 PM by Roavin. Edit Reason: Added Recalculated Legislator removals )

Reply

Recalls are never an easy matter, but speaking personally I felt that there was no choice but to proceed with this one. Whilst I do not question the good intentions of Omega, his failure to properly administrate the Assembly and maintain the necessary legal records means that I cannot say with any confidence what the law is on a number of issues. The office of the Chair of the Assembly is principally an administrative one, and there can be no question that in regards to this there have been severe failings.

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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So, I'm generally confused here. Omega did just win re-election.

If this was all as problematic as we're making it out to be, wouldn't the voters have objected?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

(This post was last modified: 02-01-2017, 09:20 PM by Tsunamy.)

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So, I'm generally confused here. Omega did just win re-election.

If this was all as problematic as we're making it out to be, wouldn't the voters have objected?

Personally, I voted against the re-election in the first place for the same reasons, though at the time it was a subjective impression. I recently checked the roster to see something, and I was horrified at the state it was in, and took the time to recalculate it. Others joined in with their pieces of data, and as bad as the subjective picture was for me, it's even more horrible with the actual data.

Why he was re-elected? Honestly, I suspect it was primarily the early APC bloc vote. Inb4 "that's the problem with parties" - yeah, you're right that this is a problem if a party doesn't deliberate things responsibly. Had I ran for re-election as MoRA the last time around, TIL would not have supported me and for good reasons.

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Also, I'd like to mention that, at least for me, this is not an indictment against Ryccia, especially considering that Ryccia had been doing all of this from mobile.

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So, I'm generally confused here. Omega did just win re-election.

If this was all as problematic as we're making it out to be, wouldn't the voters have objected?

You can attribute a lot to the utter lack of a campaign period we has. At the time I had chosen to run a clean campaign and intentionally avoided attacking Omega in mine, also nowhere near realizing the extent of this. Had there been a campaign at all these issues could have been raised nore thoroughly but instead it was ignored and Omega had the incumbent advantage.

This was not without heavy consideration and an investigation into his failings in frankly every area as CoA, compiled in the report above. The actions last term that continue into this term were simply unacceptable and should no longer be tolerated. This performance is measurably worse than under almost any (active) Chair in recent years.

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This recall should be in the Private Halls.

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This recall should be in the Private Halls.

Oh? Why?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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This recall should be in the Private Halls.

Oh? Why?

Scouring records, recalls of old would be in the Private Halls. Why is this one any different?

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This recall should be in the Private Halls.

Oh? Why?

Scouring records, recalls of old would be in the Private Halls. Why is this one any different?

The Chair is not a political position, but an administrative one.

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