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A Summer of Elections

 

By: Omega

 

Once again TSP has finished holding elections for every elected position over the course of the last two months. These elections saw some fresh faces elected to the Cabinet and LC, as well as some incumbents be reelected.

 

The election season kicked off with cabinet elections. The race to watch was the Prime Minister race which saw Glen-Rhodes (Sandaoguo), Farengeto and Roavin all run. Glen laid out a very pragmatic program, while Farengeto and Roavin both promised a more active PM as well as the encouragement of working with each ministry. Roavin did face some questions about a potential Conflict of Interest due to his position as First Warden in The Grey Wardens, however in the end Roavin did win with 53% of the vote in the second round.

 

Spenty ran unopposed in the race for Minister of Regional Affairs as did Escade in her re-election bid for Minister of Foreign affairs.

 

In the race for Minister of Military Affairs, Yuno ran against Witchcraft and Sorcery (W&S). W&S faced many criticisms due to the small amount of time between when he joined TSP and when he ran for office. Yuno ended up winning with 73.5% of the vote.

 

It is worth noting that for the first time in TSP’s history that every member of the Cabinet is associated with a political party, Roavin with TIL and all of the others with the APC.

 

After Cabinet elections, Chair of the Assembly elections were held after Cormac resigned in fustration. In this race Farengeto ran against Imperial Frost Federation, who ended up conceding the race as voting began. Farengeto won with 93% of the vote.

 

In the Local Council elections we saw 6 candidates run for 3 seats. The winners were Pencil Sharpeners 2, Ebonhand (Griffindor) and Mostly Benevolent Tyranny (Drall). Griffindor and Drall are also both APC members.

 

Lastly were the delegate elections.This saw a race between CRS member Sam111, former Prime Minister Drugged Monkeys and former Minister of Regional affairs Seraph. Drugged Monkeys and Seraph made it to the gameside voting round, where Drugged Monkeys won the delegacy with 57% of the vote.

 

Ih has been a terrific elections season, and I personally can not wait to see what all of our new and returning officials do over the course of their terms in office. Best of luck to them as always, and I look hopefully into the future!

Communication is Key
By: Punchwood

The key to any successful region is communication. Sure, cultural events help to keep a region active, and a strong military and foreign policy also helps to ensure your region is a successful one. Yet without communication your region will never truly be able to thrive.

The main form of domestic communication is an active media. Allowing people to share ideas and viewpoints, entertaining people with their articles, and keeping the region informed. For new members and for nations who aren't members of the forums, active media is incredibly important for them. They allow them to remain informed of the goings on in the region and better understand the politics and players in the region.

Active media also keeps pressure on government officials, they can be criticised and praised by the media. The media can conduct polls and surveys to see how voters and citizens approve of elected officials and their actions. They can show us the views of citizens on constitutional matters, where they think the region is heading, and so on.

The media also allows for the sharing of ideas in the simplest way. Columns, like this one would receive little attention as a separate thread, but as part of a newspaper issue, it would receive much greater attention and more people will think about the idea conveyed.

In short an active media is essential for the well-being of a region. Without it many in the region would remain uninformed, elected officials would not know what voters wanted from them until election day, and the sharing of ideas would be much harder.

Successful communication does not just mean success domestically. While an active domestic media may be serving your region well, you also need an active foreign media. For a region to grow its influence, it needs people outside its own regional boundaries to know the goings on in the region.

What does it matter if your region wants to become the premier region in culture? Let's say people outside your region hear about your region’s success in culture. What does it matter if your region’s military is quickly growing and becoming more successful and as such becoming more powerful in gameplay unless non-natives know about these success? How can you claim your region is a fun place to come and join if you aren't telling people about it internationally? 

Regular dispatches gameside and getting those dispatches upvoted to the top is a key part of foreign communication. Having regular updates in your Embassies across all the different regions is also key. The more people know and learn about the events in your region, the more influential and powerful it becomes, and thus the more successful too.

Spenty and I have been working on and will continue to work on a plan to grow and improve communication in TSP. In producing active media, RA has already taken important steps in terms of the creation of the Journalism Support Service, a programme that proofreads articles of independent newspapers to encourage more independent news stations to start up.

We hope to see the creation of Journalism awards in the region, to encourage journalists and to show them that we truly value the time and effort they put in their articles in making them the very best. Some awards will be non-competitive and will be there to simply encourage people to write a few articles, while some awards will be competitive. We hope that these awards will help create a friendly form of competition between journalists and see them produce their very best work.

We also have plans to bring back some form of a foreign communication programme, showing all of NationStates the incredible achievements, and events going on in the region. They will help show TSP to be a truly dynamic region with cultural and military success, competitive politics and an all round great place to be. A strong foreign communication programme will allow the region to grow and become more influential in gameside politics.

Communication is the key to any region’s success and as such is the key to TSP’s success and future growth. I am incredibly optimistic about this term, not just for communication but for RA as a whole. We are starting to see more and more activity in both RA and the region as a whole, cultural events. An active military is helping with that growth and activity. Communication however will be the thing that will take TSP from being a good region to a great region. Communication will be the thing that will take TSP from being some what influential to being very influential. Communication will be the thing that will take TSP from being a surviving region into a thriving region.



Coffee & NS
A column every issue by me! (Spenty)

It has been a few days since the end of the election season. It lasted for over two months, starting with the cabinet elections and ending with the delegate elections. This season was one of the most intense election cycles since the start of the year.

As usual, there are four elections during the election cycle. The first election is the Cabinet Elections where candidates run for the five positions namely: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Regional Affairs, Minister of Military Affairs, Prime Minister, and Craziest Person. For this election, Escade (the incumbent Minister of Foreign Affairs), Spenty (the incumbent Minister of Regional Affairs) , Yuno (a distinguished interregional military official), Roavin (also a distinguished military official and former Minister of Regional & Military Affairs)  and Gordon Freeman (APC Member)won these positions respectively.

Out of the five elections only the MoFA election was uncontested although the MoRA race became uncontested when AwesomeSaucer dropped out of the race. The rest of the races were very tight especially the PM and the craziest (after all, it’s meant to be crazy). In fact, Roavin posted election graphs on this thread: http://tspforums.xyz/thread-5245.html as a testimony to how crazy the elections were. All of the campaigns during the election season were very good and well-written. 

 

Nothing to see here, just crazy graphs

 It is also worth noting that all the ministers are serving in the South Pacific Special Forces although it shouldn’t be feared that all of the ministers are military people. The cabinet for this term is full of wonderful people and I believe that the cabinet could make a difference in TSP.  

Let’s now move on to the Special Chair of Assembly Elections which were held as Cormac, the previous Chair of Assembly, resigned, making it the fourth consecutive Chair of Assembly to resign from office. I’m not going to dwell into this story but let’s just say that the job is not easy. Anyways, among Farengeto, Frost and RoN (Re-open Nominations) , Farengeto won in a landslide with 93.2% of the total votes.  

The Local Council Elections were as interesting as the last LC elections where we nearly voted to reopen nominations. Out of six candidates, Pencil Sharpeners 2 proceeded to win the first seat with nearly 50% of the vote. The second vote was very interesting as it ended in a tie between Mostly Benevolent Tyranny (Drall) and Ebonhand (Griffindor) with 21 votes each and so a third vote was not needed anymore as the three seats are already filled.   

And finally, there’s the very intense Delegate election where three candidates namely Sam (CRS Member and Former Local Councillor and Minister of Foreign Affairs), Drugged Monkeys (Former Prime Minister) and Seraph (Former Local Councillor and Minister of Regional Affairs) competed in a tight race to succeed Tsunamy as the next delegate of the region as he did not run for re-election. The heat started in the first round which was done forum-side in which Seraph and Drugged Monkeys went on to the second round. The second round was just as contested with DM winning over Seraph with a vote of 49-65 in the regional poll held by Tsunamy.  

I believe that the candidates that we have elected are very qualified to become officials of The South Pacific and I hope to see them making their mark in The South Pacific. That’s all for now and see you in the next issue!

 

Europeian Ambassador to The South Pacific
Former Local Council Member
Former Minister of Regional Affairs
Former High Court Justice

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The crazy graph looks crazy indeed

Brihimia,
also known as Sebastian Mountbatten or Transdavisia.

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