And if there had been a full election campaign, with debates and discussions, with candidates putting forward their ideas and explaining their credentials, and at the end of that process APC had sat down and agreed that they liked the TIL candidate best and TIL had sat down and agreed they liked the APC candidate best... yeah, that would be fine. That would be how the system is meant to work.

But that didn't happen. The APC and TIL leaders met in secret at the start of elections, and agreed that TIL could pick who was MoFA and APC could pick who was MoMA. That's electioneering, plain and simple.

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

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Then tell me: are they a majority? To my current view, independents are still the majority. Is it really that much of a crime to endorse someone? If I were a party member, I would still vote by my conscience, not what the party tells me to do. Besides, if the people don't want what the party leaders want, then they can vote their candidates and ideas out of the race.

Deputy Regional Minister of the Planning and Development Agency(March 8-May 19, 2014)

Local Council Member(April 24-August 11)

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"The 1% is like a 1% battery charge. It will die out if it is not charged(the charge is the 99%). But if you don't charge it, it will die for sure, sooner or later"
- Me (2001- Present)

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(This post was last modified: 02-07-2017, 03:46 PM by Ryccia.)

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Then tell me: are they a majority? To my current view, independents are still the majority. Is it really that much of a crime to endorse someone? If I were a party member, I would still vote by my conscience, not what the party tells me to do. Besides, if the people don't want what the party leaders want, then they can vote their candidates and ideas out of the race.

We had 29 votes during the delegate election. Does the APC and TIL make up 15 people? That would be more than 50%

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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And there's nothing wrong with a group of people with the same views arguing them together in the Assembly Ryccia; that's the way the system is meant to work.

But if you get people meeting in secret to decide the result before the debate has even occurred, then it's subverting the process - especially if they're deciding the result on the basis of political horsetrading. There is no point in having an Assembly, or in having debates, if the TIL and APC leadership are going to meet in private and come to their own secret agreements about the issues.

You know all about secrecy don't you Bel?

I am Zadiner/Zak. Part of Assembly, some other stuff, Founder of some other region.
Hey, I have a bunch of issues. You don't need to care.
Emoji of the week:  :dodgy:

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Then tell me: are they a majority? To my current view, independents are still the majority. Is it really that much of a crime to endorse someone? If I were a party member, I would still vote by my conscience, not what the party tells me to do. Besides, if the people don't want what the party leaders want, then they can vote their candidates and ideas out of the race.

We had 29 votes during the delegate election. Does the APC and TIL make up 15 people? That would be more than 50%

I'm just assuming. Meh. That means that party members are a majority, at least in that election.

Either way, if they are the majority, they are the majority.

Deputy Regional Minister of the Planning and Development Agency(March 8-May 19, 2014)

Local Council Member(April 24-August 11)

Court Justice of TSP(August 15-December 7)

Quotes

"The 1% is like a 1% battery charge. It will die out if it is not charged(the charge is the 99%). But if you don't charge it, it will die for sure, sooner or later"
- Me (2001- Present)

"Change is the world's blood"
- Me (2001-Present)

[Image: 9ehfkQV.png]

(This post was last modified: 02-07-2017, 05:10 PM by Ryccia.)

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And there's nothing wrong with a group of people with the same views arguing them together in the Assembly Ryccia; that's the way the system is meant to work.

But if you get people meeting in secret to decide the result before the debate has even occurred, then it's subverting the process - especially if they're deciding the result on the basis of political horsetrading. There is no point in having an Assembly, or in having debates, if the TIL and APC leadership are going to meet in private and come to their own secret agreements about the issues.

You know all about secrecy don't you Bel?

I dunno, but I do know that if I had cooked up a scheme like this one Glen would be accusing me of treason most likely. If something is bad when I do it, it has to be bad when other people do it too.

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

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Yeah, the endoswap deal was bad. I'm just going to say that right now. It should not have occurred however I do know for a fact that the APCRC has learned from it. The APCRC has learned that it was bad, it should have been done differently if done at all, we should have held our standard primary and we just overall messed up here. And I hope the current APCRC will learn from this and I hope the current and future leadership of both parties will learn that we made a mistake. The APC should have at the very least publically voted on the deal, which we did not do. The APC should have waited for the full slate of candidates to be announced which we did not do. And lastly, we should have held a primary (which we will hold now that Roavin dropped out). The deal was bad and as they say, hindsight is 20/20.


Edit: I do wish to point out that the APCRC did not see this in any way as rigging an election, though. I just want to stress that. No member of the APCRC saw this as rigging, we saw this as an act of bi-partisan cooperation. And every member of the APCRC never had any intentions of forcing our members to vote for who the party endorses.

Let's be clear, I don't think anyone had the intention of rigging an election. I think it's just the logical extension of endorsements when we only have two parties (and those two parties make up more than half the electorate).

Do people even know they can start a political party?

One could make the argument that, while parties should be allowed and their continued existence permitted to the fullest extent, the formation of new parties, just for the sake of having a diversity of them, should not be encouraged (which isn't the same as saying they should be discouraged). If a group of legislators is sufficiently involved, chances are they already know parties exist and either will join one of the existing ones or form their own.

Beyond that, political parties are not the end all be all of regional politics. They are a useful tool for those who see benefits in better organising relationships or political positions that they have in common with others, but it is just as possible (and we have 14 years of history to prove it) to run an efficient government without parties.

I agree with that Kris, in theory, and that's part of the reason I never saw political parties as fruitful because a vast majority of the region is generally on the same page (as Seraph mentions below). But, there are factions currently pushing for things like RMB voting and such that could reasonably be another party.

Again, I'm just thinking aloud here, but if you're a newbie, do you know you can create your own party? Would things like a dispatch, a thread, a forum — help?

Okay, so as the current Minister of Regional Affairs, rather than as a member of a political party (TIL, for those who aren't aware), I actually think that more parties might well be a good thing and that, as part of the various integration resources we have/are working on, some kind of mention of the possibility of joining or creating parties should be seen.

Maybe a re-structuring of the legislator apps is in order? Like, breaking out our long thread but also providing things like "Political Groups to Join"?

Good idea.

John Hills- President of Ausstan

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And there's nothing wrong with a group of people with the same views arguing them together in the Assembly Ryccia; that's the way the system is meant to work.

But if you get people meeting in secret to decide the result before the debate has even occurred, then it's subverting the process - especially if they're deciding the result on the basis of political horsetrading. There is no point in having an Assembly, or in having debates, if the TIL and APC leadership are going to meet in private and come to their own secret agreements about the issues.

You know all about secrecy don't you Bel?

I dunno, but I do know that if I had cooked up a scheme like this one Glen would be accusing me of treason most likely. If something is bad when I do it, it has to be bad when other people do it too.

I'm not entirely sure if this is even at a magnitude close to what you're suggesting. They did a stupid thing, yes, but they've met in secret like a billion times before. This is what parties do in real life. Some thing need to happen behind the scenes for the sake of speed. We really don't need to base this whole discussion on what Glen has and might have done. No one has spoken of Griff but it seems you're at Glen again (you too Glen, stop going off at Bel). We could get somewhere in a discussion for once if you two grew up.

I am Zadiner/Zak. Part of Assembly, some other stuff, Founder of some other region.
Hey, I have a bunch of issues. You don't need to care.
Emoji of the week:  :dodgy:

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And if there had been a full election campaign, with debates and discussions, with candidates putting forward their ideas and explaining their credentials, and at the end of that process APC had sat down and agreed that they liked the TIL candidate best and TIL had sat down and agreed they liked the APC candidate best... yeah, that would be fine. That would be how the system is meant to work.

But that didn't happen. The APC and TIL leaders met in secret at the start of elections, and agreed that TIL could pick who was MoFA and APC could pick who was MoMA. That's electioneering, plain and simple.

I have to agree with Bel's point here. It's quite simple to me.
If the agreement happened AFTER campaigns were posted and reviewed, it would have made sense. But it didn't.
It happened before campaigns could be posted, questions could be asked, and discussions had.

I don't have any issues with parties in TSP, at least not until this happened. But even still, we can prevent the slippery slope effect here and have an honest and polite discussion about how we want these types of situations to be handled in the future, to avoid this being the straw that broke the camel's back so early on in the Political Party Era.

Semi-Unretired

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Lets just be real here for once.

You do not need to see a campaign to know that you support or oppose people. Not one of you condemning the agreement can sit there and say you have no opinion on others until you see a platform. We have literally elected people without platforms. Your own platform, DM, is "I don't have anything specific to say", leaving us all to use our own judgement of your character and capability to be our government's leader. (And if we want to discuss this even closer to reality, we can talk about how 90% of campaign promises never even come to fruition!)

That's a criticism that isn't founded in reality. Everybody here knows Roavin and they know that he's probably the most capable, reasonable, and responsible person in the region. It shouldn't be a surprise that many would be willing to support him on that alone.


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