Hello South Pacificans,

I just wanted to briefly let you know that we've already been discussing potential appointments for a new Permanent Justice. It's not an easy process, so we'll still need a bit, but we're working on it with all due haste.

-- Roavin

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Hello South Pacificans,

as you know, we're still without a Permanent Justice, and so we're working towards finding a replacement. We've drafted an interview form, containing some general questions, some requests for amicus briefs on previous legal questions, as well as some sample legal questions to answer. We've sent this form to several potential candidates, most of which have answered already, and will use that to determine a replacement. It's a difficult process for a variety of reasons, one of which being that there are not always "correct" answers to these questions. In fact, one of the sample legal questions, phrased as a "yes/no" question, has been answered as non-judiciable as well as both positively and negatively by various candidates, all of which with good and sound reasoning. 

In more positive news, the South Pacific Special Forces has been doing very well. Minister Yuno's recruitment campaign (you all got the Telegram!) brought hard results, with a double-digit number of new recruits that have received training already. A new general has been appointed and now approved by the Assembly, SPSF now has a recordkeeper keeping track of operations and operation counts for individual soldiers, several people were promoted to an Officer rank, and various further nuanced streamlining and improvement has been done. Of course, SPSF has also been incredibly active, doing operations every single game update (every 12 hours) of various kinds. Notable is the participation in the defense of Portugal, in which a very large group of raiders tried to stealthily invade the region but were shut down by a coalition of SPSF, our allies from the Rejected Realms and Lazarus, as well as our friends in the Order of the Grey Wardens, the Renegade Island Alliance, FORGE, and 10000 Islands.

In regional affairs, we now have a separate channel for IC roleplay discussion on our Discord server called #bantam-harbour. Realtime IC dialogue is new for our roleplay community (though the concept exists in other places), so it will be interesting to see how the culture there organically develops. Furthermore, it's been said that we may be getting our own YouTube channel - more on that another time! Finally, we as a region have been blessed with great graphics for a while now, but recently the bar has been raised even higher. In the Ministry's Art Department, you can find our well-known graphics goddess Imki as well as talented fellows Ruthrax and Aumelodia collaborating, with other fellows giving constructive criticism. It is an incredibly and awe-inspiringly calm, friendly, organic, and productive atmosphere, and it just warms my heart to see it.

Last, but not least - good luck to the candidates for the Delegacy! And as always, I love answering questions, so if you like me, you should indulge me with some

-- Roavin

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Hello South Pacificans,

it's been a while since I've last given an update - and there is a good reason for it. As many of you already know, our dear friends in Lazarus are currently being couped. The cabinet has been working overtime helping to managing this situation and giving our good ally as much help as we can. We are currently opening an embassy with Lazarene Exiles, a region for nations banned from Lazarus as a result of the coup. Once it's open, I encourage you to cross-post messages of support on that region's RMB.

Partially as a result of the Lazarus kerfuffle, we've also had some foreign affairs kerfuffles. First, the West Pacific decided to close embassies with us due to disagreements on our Discord server as well as our support for the government-in-exile in Lazarus (which they oppose). It's regrettable but, honestly, not the end of the world. Furthermore, Balder has declared us a "hostile" region based on a variety of absurd claims. It's also regrettable, but if the government of Balder wishes to believe falsehoods, then we can't do anything about it except stand above it.

I realize that these two foreign affairs happenings can seem worrying, and I really only gave you the reader's digest version. However, I do believe in transparency and I see it as my duty to tell you about it rather than trying to hide it. If you have any questions or worries about this, please don't hesitate to contact me about it.

Now, onto more positive things in foreign affairs - as always, Escade has been talking to many people and generally being culturally very engaged here and abroad. Concurrently with this year's Defender Awards, Escade set up a spontaneous Defender Expo where people of all alignments and interests (defender, raider, independent, unaligned, neutral, what have you) were invited for various fun events, including movie nights and chasing competitions. Other such cultural events, though with more of a slant towards specific regions, are sure to follow.

In regional affairs, Editor-in-Chief Punchwood and Minister Spenty have been working hard on our journalistic efforts, and indeed we just had another release of the Southern Journal, with another publication coming very, very soon. Furthermore, as you may have noticed from hints here or there, we've got a regional festival coming up very soon! I'm quite excited. And, did I hear something about a TSP Anthem?

The South Pacific Special Forces are ridiculously active as always - and that's despite the current summer lull across NationStates! Really, there isn't much more to be said except that I'm incredibly proud of the SPSF, which continues to be the most active and most competent GCR military currently around. A new military code is still in the works, though Yuno has submitted a specific amendment to get her feet wet in the legislative process. Progress has been somewhat slow on this due to, in part, Lazarus - I hope that's understandable.

We finally sent a Permanent Justice candidate to the Assembly - Kringalia (aka Kris Kringle). We took quite a bit of time, including evaluating the entire legislator roster, sending a large evaluation form to prospective candidates, and personally interviewing people. We feel good about our choice, even though it was politically probably the worst option, and hope that the Assembly approves him for the position (this is currently at vote).

That's all for now. This update is quite long - too long, even. I need to start doing these more frequently so that this doesn't happen anymore. And as always, I love answering your questions, so feel free to ask me here, or via TG, or on the RMB, or via forum PM, or via Discord, or via IRC even, any and all questions that you have.

-- Roavin

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Hello South Pacificans,

hope you're enjoying the festival!

Our laws have some interesting and lesser-known corners. In Article VI Section 13 of our Charter, it's said that we can appoint deputy ministers and advisors as junior cabinet members (without voting rights). Before the Great Council in 2016, it was quite standard to have 1-3 deputies for each ministry partaking in Cabinet business (without voting rights), but cabinets since the Great Council have either not let their deputies take part in Cabinet business, or not even have a deputy at all. We're not going to change that - we'll continue to operate without deputies in the cabinet.

However, the charter also explicitly mentions advisors. Given that we are a pretty young cabinet, an older player, one who's been around the block a few times, and is universally trusted, would make a great advisor. Well, we have one of those, freshly out of a job! I'm very happy and proud to present our new general advisor in the Cabinet, Tsunamy! He won't be assigned to any specific ministry, but rather will just help us four cabinet ministers reach good decisions for the community.

As always - I have a question fetish. Please indulge me <3

-- Roavin

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I am completely sure that the cabinet has been working on much more important things, but have ya'll had any thought as to which ministries you are planning on splitting into other ones, if at all?

-Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions
-Legislator 2/24/20-
-High Court Justice 6/7/20-
-South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20-
-Minister of Engagement 6/17/22-

-Past Roles/Positions
-Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18
-Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21
-Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17
-Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18
-Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17
-Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and  2/26/16-7/3/2016

(This post was last modified: 08-12-2017, 12:23 PM by Griffindor.)

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Thanks for the question! Spenty intends to do an informal split in regional affairs as a testing ground, but that hasn't happened yet. As for the other ministries, we don't see a need to split those.

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Very well! Thanks for the quick reply

-Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions
-Legislator 2/24/20-
-High Court Justice 6/7/20-
-South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20-
-Minister of Engagement 6/17/22-

-Past Roles/Positions
-Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18
-Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21
-Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17
-Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18
-Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17
-Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and  2/26/16-7/3/2016

Reply

@Roavin Erm, what is Spenty splitting it into?

Signed,

Positions:
Legislator of The South Pacific
King of Machina, Defence Realm of Illuminati Alliance
Citizen of The East Pacific

Former Positions:

Overlord of Masterz
Seargant of HYDRA
Talon of Firehehlm
Munifiex of The Roman Empire

Reply

The exact details are still being discussed and worked out, so I can't really give you any info that's particularly likely of remaining accurate.

Reply

Thanks anyways, Roavy

Signed,

Positions:
Legislator of The South Pacific
King of Machina, Defence Realm of Illuminati Alliance
Citizen of The East Pacific

Former Positions:

Overlord of Masterz
Seargant of HYDRA
Talon of Firehehlm
Munifiex of The Roman Empire

Reply