I think that’s because there’s no actual accountability. The only way people can be held accountable for their actions and behavior is if their friend (Roavin) publicly calls them out on it. So often in this game, these issues are only spoken about in DMs and fronts are put up in public during elections, because “the devil you know”-type thinking. If we’re going to elect people to play these roles in our game, we should be able to have accountability, and that’s done by being honest and transparent. When things get as bad as they are, I’m not sure there’s any way to deal with them without drastic measures.

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 The issue with accountability is always going to be transparency, and a substantial amount of the people in the highest areas of power do not want more transparency. Ultimately, for any rational observer of this situation, it will all just seem like wheeling and dealing, because we don't have that level of transparency to say "This person said this" "this is how the fight progressed" "this is who blew up and why". This is also why I'm not very happy with the appointment of Serres as a special advisor, not that serres isn't competent, I believe he is, but because I think that it should be a committee established, elected and compromised of the assembly.

Until all that happens, this is all essentially colored bubbles.
 

 In my humble opinion, if you support the recall of the cabinet, then you should support the recall of the PM. A lot of people here say that Roavin's post is damaging him as well, but I haven't heard anybody asking him to step down along with the rest.

I'll just stick to correcting this: the PM is part of the Cabinet. And Roa has stated multiple times, at least on the discord, he will be removing the entire cabinet with this, including himself.

Your last second to last paragraph though, that is... an interesting proposal. Certainly not one I entirely disagree with. I'd like to see more details before I consider it further.

 I knew I'd make this mistake which is why I actually checked, and the charter says:

" VI. THE EXECUTIVE

Establishing an executive branch consisting of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet

1. The Prime Minister will be the head of government and the leader of the Cabinet. They will be responsible for the overall coordination of executive activities, being a liaison between the government and the community, and protecting the Coalition.

2. The Cabinet will consist of ministers with the following portfolios: Foreign Affairs, Regional Affairs, and Military Affairs.

3. Members of the Executive are required to hold Legislator status. "

(Emphasis my own)

So technically, the PM is not part of the cabinet. The cabinet is only the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Regional Affairs, and military Affairs.

This makes sense, because a PM calling a vote of no confidence in the cabinet would, by definition, include him or herself. If this motion passed, Roavin would remain PM while the cabinet would change. This is why I made the distinction.

I'm not really sure what you mean by 'removing' the cabinet. Do you mean damaging the cabinet members? It's not really up to Roavin or any PM to remove cabinet members, decides who runs or gets elected.

Either way, the point has to be made: according to our constitution and laws, the PM is not part of the cabinet, he/she leads it and will not be effected 'legally', or removed, by a vote of no confidence. At least under this circumstance.

As for my second paragraph, I'm glad that you're open to it. I do think a limit of some kind would definitely be doable, and in the best interests of everybody.

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I'm not really sure what you mean by 'removing' the cabinet. Do you mean damaging the cabinet members? It's not really up to Roavin or any PM to remove cabinet members, decides who runs or gets elected.

Either way, the point has to be made: according to our constitution and laws, the PM is not part of the cabinet, he/she leads it and will not be effected 'legally', or removed, by a vote of no confidence. At least under this circumstance.

For all intents and purposes, I believe Roavin sees himself as part of this Cabinet (this no motion vote, included).

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I'm not really sure what you mean by 'removing' the cabinet. Do you mean damaging the cabinet members? It's not really up to Roavin or any PM to remove cabinet members, decides who runs or gets elected.

Either way, the point has to be made: according to our constitution and laws, the PM is not part of the cabinet, he/she leads it and will not be effected 'legally', or removed, by a vote of no confidence. At least under this circumstance.

For all intents and purposes, I believe Roavin sees himself as part of this Cabinet (this no motion vote, included).

 I understand, but nations don't function well on intentions and purposes. We have rules, and those rules need to be followed, regardless of what 'actually' is going on. I know Roavin does consider himself in this, but at the same time, we need to applies the laws to every situation.

 Otherwise it's just anarchy.

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It doesn't matter in this context if the Prime Minister is part of the Cabinet, as both are included in a Motion of No Confidence:

2. A Motion of No Confidence may be initiated by the Assembly, if the members have lost faith in the effectiveness and activities of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

(This post was last modified: 05-28-2018, 04:25 PM by Nakari.)

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Having read the Cabinet's responses to my questions, and the other discussions in this thread, I do not believe a motion of no confidence is necessary. It seems to me that there have not been adequate conversations about the severity of the problems prior to this thread. Most of the arguments have taken place in DMs / backroom channels and this has led to the cabinet ministers being unaware of the full extent of the problems, and therefore there have been no collective attempts to solve them. I believe that if these concerns had been raised among the cabinet before being posted here, there may have been a possibility that the working relationships could have been salvaged and this motion wouldn't have had to take place. At the very least we would have had more clarity on the Cabinet's issues if they had all been fully aware of Roavin's feelings before he posted this.

Did some LC, MoRA, CRS stuff in the past. Do a lot of World Census stuff now.

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From roavin’s OP- “To put it simply, the Cabinet just isn’t working. I will try my best to explain the reasons” but then proceeds to only point out reasons towards Escade and Tim and avoids mentioning the other two members not including himself makes this seem biased towards them in my opinion. (unless he mentioned them in a later post which should have been added to the OP and I apologize)

Also Roavin you are on the record as saying “I think it's not wholly unreasonable to not pass the motion and just let the election run normally” does this not point to the fact that a motion of no confidence was unneeded this close to the election? Cause to me I have yet to see any evidence of the whole cabinet being dysfunctional since you seemed to point out Escade and Tim in your post and yet the “the cabinet isn’t functioning.” I know this includes Roavin in the whole cabinet recall but it looks like Tim and Escade were mentioned 99% of his post.

Just my thoughts on the situation

I'm the only other member of the cabinet. I can't speak on Roavin's choice not to mention me except with regards to my relationship with Escade though.
 

Having read the Cabinet's responses to my questions, and the other discussions in this thread, I do not believe a motion of no confidence is necessary. It seems to me that there have not been adequate conversations about the severity of the problems prior to this thread. Most of the arguments have taken place in DMs / backroom channels and this has led to the cabinet ministers being unaware of the full extent of the problems, and therefore there have been no collective attempts to solve them. I believe that if these concerns had been raised among the cabinet before being posted here, there may have been a possibility that the working relationships could have been salvaged and this motion wouldn't have had to take place. At the very least we would have had more clarity on the Cabinet's issues if they had all been fully aware of Roavin's feelings before he posted this.

Yes, that definitely seems accurate. I at least did get the sense that Roavin was becoming increasingly exasperated/tired that nothing was being done, but not to this level. But then again I definitely didn't have the connections that the other cabinet members did via DM/elsewhere.

~ Aumeltopia ~

Raccoons are bandits! First they steal your food . . . and then your heart/identity!

(This post was last modified: 05-28-2018, 04:38 PM by Somyrion.)

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I've been gathering my thoughts since last night about this motion, and reading the responses thus far, before I sat down to write this post. This is going to be a long read, apologies in advance.

For those who don't know, I consider myself close friends with both Escade and Roavin, and I've been on the MoFA Team as a senior-level advisor since June 2017 (when Escade was Minister of Foreign Affairs). I've counseled both Escade and Roavin on political topics and more personal things. So it's fair to say that, outside of the four Cabinet members themselves, I probably have the most insight into the issues mentioned in Roavin's motion. I will try to give my view of the state of the Cabinet, and particularly how it got this way.

First, I want to say something in response to a few posts here. The notion that these issues haven't been discussed before is wrong. Roavin has talked to both Tim and Escade about the issues he raised, multiple times over the past several months. I'm staring at some of those conversations right now. Escade's fighting with Somy and Nakari, and the problems with her posts in the NSGP forum, have been a topic of discussion multiple times, both by the Cabinet as a whole and in private. Roavin talked to Tim about his activity and inattentiveness, and they've had several conversations about his "my way or the highway" attitude. While Tim and Escade might feel blindsided by the act of Roavin making this motion, the contents of the motion cannot in any way have come as a surprise. If either of them are saying this is first they've heard of these problems, they're not telling the truth. So there's that.

From my point of view, the problems of this Cabinet started in full when they began negotiating the NPO treaty. A level of secrecy developed among the 3 Cabinet members we're talking about the most (Roavin, Tim, and Escade), and from that developed a group mentality of protecting each other from public accountability. When I tried to raise the issue of transparency in the February 2018 elections, I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to stop publicly disagreeing and "be on the same team," because the agenda was more important than the problems I was bringing up. The complaints I had about how foreign affairs was being run were then dismissed as a political crusade against Tim, because I just wanted to unseat him in the election. (This is, I think, the biggest reason why Roavin didn't just wait until the elections to bring up these issues. They would almost certainly be dismissed a politicking.)

From there, the general issue with the Cabinet became the impossibility of actual accountability. The precedent had been established that what was said behind closed doors would never become public, and so no amount of infighting, disrespect, dereliction, or overstepping of authority was out of bounds. And unfortunately, once this snowballed, the only way to bring any level of democratic (or even just personal) accountability back into the equation was a move like this.

My experience with this Cabinet was mostly on the MoFA Team, so I'm going to have insight into what Roavin is saying about Tim more than I will about Escade. I've served on the team as a holdover since Escade's term as MoFA, so I've been there the entirety of Tim's tenure. Up until this last term, things were par for the course. There were disagreements, obviously, but nothing toxic. Come around to late January to the February elections and start of that term, the disagreements turned personal. If I made a point about what we should when it came to supporting or dropping the Celestial Union, Tim had to make note that he did more than I ever did to help Lazarus. That's how the bad environment started-- little personal jabs here and there.

As a leader, Tim has been abysmal. I don't know how to say it in kinder terms. The environment that has existed on the MoFA Team for the past 5 months has been, if not toxic, then noxious. To use the discussion about the Celestial Union as an example again, I had suggested we simply recognize that no legitimate government existed, rather than publicly denounce the CU, because the latter could harm the way we're seen by allies. During that discussion, Tim's way of disagreeing was inflammatory and condescending. Disagreeing with him was "being whiny" and he did more than you did for the cause, so your opinion isn't worth anything anyways. (I'll note that what I suggested doing was what the Cabinet ended up doing.) That kind of stuff may seem small, but it was ultimately the seed for how the rest of the term would go.

The level of open and blatant disrespect in the MoFA HQ increased from there. Tim oscillated between saying he wanted me on the team because I have a perspective he wouldn't consider when making decisions, to saying things like, "Catch me in a [good] mood if you want actual good shit from me. Otherwise I'll just do petty low blows and snipes. Better than Glen's self-righteous nonsense though." Whenever I had a point of disagreement about an FA decision, Tim felt the need to announce that my political opinions were worthless. Oftentimes, he would flaunt his reelection as a reason why my counsel wasn't taken seriously.

Take from that what you will. To me, that represents a bad environment that's reflective of the leader himself. In my 5 years of being TSP, i've dealt with a lot of heated disagreement. But the way Tim behaves isn't just being an aggressive player because he's so passionate about the cause. It's just downright mean on a personal level. I've never been subject to the kind of "low blows and snipes" that I've dealt with for the past 5 months, and I'm including my historically fiery feud with Belschaft. That environment was reflective of the zero accountability in the Cabinet. I complained several times to both Roavin and Escade, and was told a lot that the "team" was important and I needed to be a "team player." They were both willing, for a long time, to let Tim behave poorly and create a toxic environment, because of the perceived necessity of having Tim as MoFA for the NPO treaty and Lazarus agendas. I will give Roavin credit that he eventually saw that it was the wrong way to deal with the situation.

That's my own contribution in addition to Roavin's points about Tim, separate from the ones he brought up in the initial motion. I'll say that the original issues have merit, too. Tim was inattentive to his duties as MoFA. I can understand real-life issues with access to the internet and all, but that was never a reason given at the actual time these issues were brought up. For example, Tim was reminded to give the Conch Kingdom an update, because they had requested one. Tim waited until the last minute to write up an update, and it ended up being 6 bullet points that weren't even complete sentences, one of which was just "[TSP] is thrivin'." He tried to spin it as purposefully unprofessional because CK would appreciate the "vibe," but it was obvious that he just didn't feel like doing the job. That was, to my knowledge, the last update that went out that he wrote himself. That's one more example of Tim not fulfilling his job, and it was one instance where Roavin explicitly talked to him about it.

Like Roavin, I've also been very concerned with Tim's propensity to go nuclear when things aren't done his way. This is often paired with commands of secrecy. The straw that broke the camel's back that I talked about in my previous posts was just one of these instances. Just last Friday Tim announced to the Cabinet and the CRS, in our joint channel, that he was essentially cutting off all interaction with TNP for the indefinite future, because he personally doesn't accept their conclusion on the whole Imki saga. This was after a discussion among the MoFA team that this wasn't okay, because it was bringing "IC" into an "OOC" issue, and the Cabinet didn't consent to it. Despite the Cabinet not agreeing, Tim told the CRS that he was banning us from doing anything with TNP regarding our own WA Development Program, and then said we were not allowed to reveal his cutting off of TNP, because it was top secret. (For the record, the CRS didn't have any actual plans with TNP.)

This raises a lot of red flags. First, Tim said he didn't care if the Cabinet didn't agree, that he was "flexing" his powers. When CRS members questioned if his demand was even legal, he said again that he didn't care, that we could sue him, and it would be months before the Court could even reach a decision. This shows a willingness to abuse his power and authority, believing there wouldn't be consequences in time for them to matter because how long court cases take. Second, it shows that Tim is willing to use his authority for personal means, to do things about issues that he has a personal stance on but aren't government-related. Third, when discussing a possible court case of all of that, he said he would purposefully keep talking about it in the channel, as a way to force Kris and myself to recuse from that case. That shows a disrespect for the judiciary by trying to game it for his benefit.

When it was all said and done, he tried to walk back everything as him joking while he was tipsy. To my knowledge, his order that TSP have no interaction with TNP for the indefinite future still holds, and he has had no plans whatsoever of informing the Assembly. Given that he made his demand in the CRS-Cabinet joint channel for security discussions, and it had nothing to do with security whatsoever, I don't believe it qualifies as privileged or confidential information. When you blow up like that and start making questionably legal demands, and then call it all top secret so the Assembly can't be informed, that is abuse of power in my opinion. It ties back into the serious lack of transparency that has plagued the Cabinet this past year.

That was the blowup that (I think) really convinced Roavin to make this motion, though he can confirm or deny that officially. To me, a lot of this information is stuff that I've known for a long time and have had to keep under wraps because of confidentiality. I could have resigned from the MoFA Team, rather than endure Tim's behavior, and I recognize that maybe I should have. But staying on the team was the only way I could still be allowed to counsel Roavin on foreign affairs, so I never resigned as a favor to him. I believe Roavin made some serious mistakes in losing control of the Cabinet, but at the core he's doesn't have authoritarian tendencies and is willing to listen and really take in competing views. So I stayed for that reason.

Now, on to Escade. Like I said, I don't have a whole lot to say about these complaints, because I worked mostly in the FA realm. I'll say that I disagree with Roavin on chastising Escade for her writing style, because I don't believe it's been a genuine issue. I'll be honest that I consider myself good friends with Escade, and it genuinely pains me to talk about these issues in this context. But Roavin raises good points about the unprovoked fighting with Somy, Nakari, and Seraph. It's something her and I have talked about in the past, because we both have issues with how we approach situations and end up escalating them. Unfortunately, things haven't changed despite all the attempts to talk through things. There was a blowup surrounding the LOTR Festival, that happened again in the joint security channel (that wasn't against security... again!), that reflected very poorly and showed a kind of zero-to-100 escalation that wasn't really warranted. I didn't have to deal with that environment, unlike Roavin, but I can see how it can be incredibly frustrating and lead to real problems in the Cabinet.

At the end of the day, we have our Prime Minister taking the extraordinary step of bearing it all out to the Assembly, because he feels the Cabinet is so dysfunctional. That alone should be a huge concern for us. Roavin has probably burned bridges with two people he considers friends, because he felt like the only other choice was for the situation to continue on without any consequences. There have been a lot of serious misdeeds with this Cabinet, and now it's all being put on the table. That allows us to have accountability where there was none, and I really hope we don't just let this fall to wayside and think it's business as usual.

I'm less interested in debating Roavin's feelings on the matter (which are valid and I hope people take heed of them) than I am addressing the practical application of the situation.

Okay, that's understandable. At first, your post came across as dismissive of the problems, like this is just how things go and Roavin shouldn't be making a deal out of it. I'm glad I'm wrong about that

Practically, it doesn't make sense to hold a special election so close to the next general. You're right about that. Roavin explained that he did this because people wouldn't really listen and take it in if he said these things in the midst of an election. Making an official motion kind of puts his money where his mouth is, which maybe has a bigger impact than just writing out a statement with no call to action in it. From my chats with him, he genuinely feels like this Cabinet doesn't work and hasn't worked for the past several weeks. He felt obligated to say something, lest it all stay hidden behind closed doors and nobody is held accountable for anything.

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I believe that if these concerns had been raised among the cabinet before being posted here, there may have been a possibility that the working relationships could have been salvaged and this motion wouldn't have had to take place. At the very least we would have had more clarity on the Cabinet's issues if they had all been fully aware of Roavin's feelings before he posted this.

Again, there was nothing here that I had not expressed dissatisfaction about before (and usually I had done so multiple times), it just didn't necessarily happen within the four walls of the Cabinet office.

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I believe that if these concerns had been raised among the cabinet before being posted here, there may have been a possibility that the working relationships could have been salvaged and this motion wouldn't have had to take place. At the very least we would have had more clarity on the Cabinet's issues if they had all been fully aware of Roavin's feelings before he posted this.

Again, there was nothing here that I had not expressed dissatisfaction about before (and usually I had done so multiple times), it just didn't necessarily happen within the four walls of the Cabinet office.

If the entire cabinet isn't aware of issues, how can you solve them as a team? Also, I suspect that the cabinet members were caught off guard, not by the specific issues, but by the fact that you thought they were bad enough to warrant a motion of no confidence. Had you made the cabinet aware that the issues were this bad and that this motion was the next step you would take?

Did some LC, MoRA, CRS stuff in the past. Do a lot of World Census stuff now.

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I believe that if these concerns had been raised among the cabinet before being posted here, there may have been a possibility that the working relationships could have been salvaged and this motion wouldn't have had to take place. At the very least we would have had more clarity on the Cabinet's issues if they had all been fully aware of Roavin's feelings before he posted this.

Again, there was nothing here that I had not expressed dissatisfaction about before (and usually I had done so multiple times), it just didn't necessarily happen within the four walls of the Cabinet office.

If the entire cabinet isn't aware of issues, how can you solve them as a team? Also, I suspect that the cabinet members were caught off guard, not by the specific issues, but by the fact that you thought they were bad enough to warrant a motion of no confidence. Had you made the cabinet aware that the issues were this bad and that this motion was the next step you would take?

I actually looked very briefly, and so this is an incomplete list:

• Tim's broken promises were mentioned multiple times in each of DMs, FA HQ, and in the Cabinet office.
  
• Escade's NSGP rantiness was mentioned in DMs and in the Cabinet forum.
  
• Escade's Somy-bashing has occured and been talked about in DMs, the Cabinet office, and the Cabinet forum.
  
• Tim's propensity to present nuclear ultimatums has been talked about in DMs, FA HQ, and forum PM.
  
• Escade's vindictiveness has been mentioned in DMs and in the cabinet office
  

So as it turns out, yes, the team has seen all of these at some point. I urge you to not get stuck on this one item and consider it "the solution", but rather look at the broader scope of things. These are systemic and intrinsic problems. I'm trying to present them as honestly as I can (which includes my failures - yes, I could and should have addressed these things better and differently, as I've stated many times). My reputation is not unscathed by me doing this, and I knew that going into it.

Meanwhile, Escade is currently on a tirade in various places seen and unseen, proudly extolling everything that she's done for the region and claiming things that are absurd conspiracies at best and outright demonstrable lies at worst. I'll leave it to you to judge what's going on here.

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