I find it awfully convenient that Roavin won't be eligible to vote if we proceed with a Great Council, even if it wasn't the intent of the prime minister.

Article 4 would give Kringle the power to let people in even if they didn't have legislator status before the deadline, and I imagine he'd be happy to let Roavin in.

And Roavin as a legislator will be able to vote on holding a Great Council as long as he's a legislator when a vote is held.

He also, with all due respect, voluntarily resigned Legislator status. Don't get me wrong, Roavin is great and I have loved working with him in the past. But he decided to resign and for the life of me I have no clue what "I find it awfully convenient" means besides to throw a vague side jab at the PM for something outside of his control.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

(This post was last modified: 04-29-2022, 10:43 PM by HumanSanity.)

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-snip-

-snip-

Chief Justice is still delegated with the responsibility of assigning the primary and secondary justices following the initial discussion within the entirety of the judiciary to decide whether a case is justiciable or not. Further, while the judiciary in our region is a collegial body, our laws clearly establish the separation of powers within all three branches of our government to ensure the stability of the South Pacific. 

I want to reiterate once more that the concerns I have raised here has nothing to do with Kris. He is everything Moon said and much more. 

Yet the issue remains as granting someone who is holding the highest judicial office in our region the position of legislative leader for the Great Council is, if not against the letter of the law, is against the spirit of it. 

On an unrelated note --
We have a fairly robust security apparatus that for the most part ensures undue foreign influence is not exerted into our legislative system. I am against the clauses 3 and 4 as they were written as it opens the possibility of real or perceived bias by allowing person X into the Great Council but not person Y, for whatever the reason might be. Perhaps finalizing the list of legislators as those who 'were' or 'have applied to be' legislators at the passage of this resolution, if it passes, might be better. Further, there should be no other way to be added to the Great Council membership after the passage of resolution.

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Personally, the idea of a Great Council, was, is and always will be dumb, imo. We have a system in place for changes to our current system, but ... ok.

Otherwise, I want to touch back here a minute:
 

• Delegate election process (does a forum-side and game-side round really add value?)
  
• Delegate term length (are 6 month terms and regular rotation really important for a job with so few responsibilities?)
  
• Local Council abolition and replacement
  
• Prime Minister appointment vs election of Ministers
  
• Whether Minister portfolios should be set by the Charter at all or if the Prime Minister and/or Cabinet collectively should have flexibility
  
• Citizenship reform (should we introduce WA requirements? alter activity requirements? change LegComm's structure/function?)
  
• CRS/Coral Guard reform - how is that going? We should review it again
  
• should the MoD remain a portfolio within the Cabinet or should SPSF be spun off as a Constitutionally independent organization?
  

1) Yes, the forum and game side does add value because we have to halves of a community here and it makes it so the game side isn't being dictated to by and off-site forum that is barely involved with in-game activity.

2) Yes, the delegate is a figurehead, not someone with actual power. For as much as had been argued that the prime minister needs something to do, the prime minister is effectively the head of government and has been since 2016.

3) The approach the current Assembly is taking to the in-game community is disgraceful. Firs threatening the LC and now wanting to abolish it is just beyond the pale. Unless you planning to find some other way for the in-game community to have a say in their own governance. 

4) See above regarding the Prime Minister and powers.

5) Why have laws at all? Let's just let the prime minister decide everything! 

Listen — here's the thing that seems obvious to me: there's a lack of activity and rather than try to find active participants, the powers that be are trying to consolidate power in the hands of a few. There are literally thousands of nations this Cabinet could apply to and try to get involved in off-site activities, but instead of engaging with the on-site community, they are attempting to dictate from the offsite how everything should be run. (Something like the Chair's Briefing is a fantastic move imo to try and develop crossover between the communities.)

By all means, have a Great Council. Anything you propose needs to be ratified with a 60% vote here and a 60% vote on gameside, so God bless. But, I can't help but think is this largely rearranging the deck chairs at the moment.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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My two cents.

I think a Great Council should only be used for a literal regime change. Basically, if you have to smash the entirely of TSP's government down to rubbers and start completely anew then a GC is appropriate. However, the issues we are facing, while major and critical, do not warrant a GC. An initiative facilitated by the CoA should be enough to promote productive discussions to address these issues. There are precedents for a CoA's lead effort on major reforms without GC, such as a reform on our legislative procedures back in 2016 (or 2017 I don't remember). If what we want is just overhauling the gameside government and the executive branch, we do not need a GC. GC should only be used for a 100% clean slate really. That said, if we indeed want to start a GC, I would advocate getting rid of the current version of GC and replace it with something more flexible in the new Charter altogether.

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 05-01-2022, 08:12 AM by USoVietnam.)

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If the concern is around a lack of engagement, and particularly a lack of emerging leadership talent, why are we restricting membership of the proposed Great Council to people who are already legislators? Surely if we are serious about reshaping the regional government into something people feel motivated to participate in, we need to seek views outside the ones we already hear. Otherwise we are just talking among ourselves, and potentially missing out on some fresh ideas to drive engagement.

I understand the security concerns outlined in the draft resolution but I think this is too blunt an instrument.

I think we disagree about the possible scope of security concerns from entryism into a Great Council. The South Pacific is a game created region and one which is known to take a somewhat controversial line in interregional politics, a line we take in explicit defense of our broader values and our own sovereignty. Foreign bad actors absolutely have an incentive to attempt to infiltrate the Great Council, either by using "alternate" accounts and anonymized identities (which, to a limited extent, LegComm can check against) or by simply showing up promising good faith and then never delivering it. 
 

There must be some way of involving those who are not currently legislators, but are nonetheless committed members of the region (e.g. on the gameside).

Although the Charter requires that the Assembly approve any constitutional changes that come out of a Great Council, there is nothing that prevents the Great Council itself from being composed of non-legislators. If we are going to do this, then I suggest we hear from some alternative voices.

I expect the Chair would grant exception to established members of the gameside community.
 

I am against the clauses 3 and 4 as they were written as it opens the possibility of real or perceived bias by allowing person X into the Great Council but not person Y, for whatever the reason might be. Perhaps finalizing the list of legislators as those who 'were' or 'have applied to be' legislators at the passage of this resolution, if it passes, might be better. Further, there should be no other way to be added to the Great Council membership after the passage of resolution.

This feels like a comment in search of a problem. The Chair and Deputy Chair are generally trusted South Pacificans. From my perspective, the risk of this is minimal. If we really want to, we can spell it out I guess, someone can make a list. But also, what if a long-time LCer or active RMBer returns to activity after many months away and wants to contribute?

I can, and will, take Tsu's post chunk by chunk. But even prior to that, if you disagree with my ideas that's fine, but that doesn't neglect the following two core points:
(a) there are issues with the current government structure (namely that we're using a 2015 hyper-legislative forum-oriented government structure in a region without strong political cleavages instead of a 2022 executive-oriented with public accountability government structure better suited for the NS meta of what we need from a government and interlinked broader internet changes of how attention and engagement works on NS), and
(b) that these problems are so widespread that they cannot be fixed through the amendment process alone.

1) Yes, the forum and game side does add value because we have to halves of a community here and it makes it so the game side isn't being dictated to by and off-site forum that is barely involved with in-game activity.

The fact that the off-site forum is barely involved in in-game activity is a state of affairs that has come into existence due to the arbitrarily enforced division between the gameside and the forumside. You can't separate "off-site disengagement with the gameside" from the hostility of the gameside to the off-site and also from forum-users' lack of desire or motivation to engage the gameside. You are correct, once you have already decided there is a divide between these two platforms, one will form and the Cabinet will become institutionally disinterested and incapable of RMB governance. Correcting that may take time, but removing the arbitrary institutional choice to create a divide between the game-side and the forum-side is the first step. Instead of imagining the forum as a separate community, imagining the forum as an extension of the South Pacific, the game we govern on NationStates, is the correct option and will eventually produce programmatic changes in integration and engagement.

2) Yes, the delegate is a figurehead, not someone with actual power. For as much as had been argued that the prime minister needs something to do, the prime minister is effectively the head of government and has been since 2016.

This is an argument for why the term should not be shorter than six months, not a reason the term cannot be longer than six months. Given the low work demands of the job, there is little reason to not make the job a year long term, or even life. You can disagree with that, let's discuss it at a GC

3) The approach the current Assembly is taking to the in-game community is disgraceful. Firs threatening the LC and now wanting to abolish it is just beyond the pale. Unless you planning to find some other way for the in-game community to have a say in their own governance.

I addressed this above, but I take issue with you simply picking things you don't disagree with and labeling them as "disgraceful" and "beyond the pale". This is a turn of rhetoric which is not backed by substantive argumentation and is, at best, rooted in democratic idealism which doesn't match the reality of running the region.

The Cabinet has attempted to engage with the in-game community and LC substantially in recent terms, all to little avail, with a key example of this being the Z-Day event of my term, where the LC ghosted and ignored me for weeks as I prompted them to create plans for an event which occurs entirely on the NationStates site, and then prominent members of the gameside community pretended this was a failure of the Cabinet for not having simply done the job for the LC. How is the Assembly's conduct "disgraceful"? The lines of thought in the Assembly that are becoming prevalent with regards to the gameside's autonomy are entirely in response to (a) the gameside's persistent demonizing rhetoric about the Assembly and the Cabinet and (b) the LC's persistent failure to actually govern the gameside.

Not to mention, a route will remain for all members of the Coalition to become involved in their own self-governance. That route is to take part in the government of the region, hosted on the forum as an extension of the gameside community, rather than the idea these are two communities.

5) Why have laws at all? Let's just let the prime minister decide everything! 

This is a blatant strawperson of the idea I have suggested. The Prime Minister can make essential decisions regarding executive government with an oversight or approval process from the Assembly. That is not "deciding everything" as the Assembly would retain an oversight prerogative and retain the responsibility for, ya know, passing legislation.

Listen — here's the thing that seems obvious to me: there's a lack of activity and rather than try to find active participants, the powers that be are trying to consolidate power in the hands of a few.

How is blowing open the entire system of government an effort at power consolidation? If people wanted to consolidate power, they'd allow the status quo to continue, where they already have power and there are unlikely to be threats to their power.

There are literally thousands of nations this Cabinet could apply to and try to get involved in off-site activities, but instead of engaging with the on-site community, they are attempting to dictate from the offsite how everything should be run.

I addressed this above. The system we have now provides the Cabinet, either individually or institutionally, no incentive to engage the on-site to such a deep level. Not to mention, you are being incredibly generous to the potential membership the on-site can provide us given the enormous number of card farming puppets and once-a-month log-in nations on the gameside.

Something like the Chair's Briefing is a fantastic move imo to try and develop crossover between the communities.

The last several Cabinet's have been persistently making their announcements to the region via the RMB and at times via regional TG. If that is your vision of "outreach", that happens already, and it doesn't not happen simply because you do not notice it.

That said, if we indeed want to start a GC, I would advocate getting rid of the current version of GC and replace it with something more flexible in the new Charter altogether.

I'm fine with amending the current all-or-nothing GC formula and replacing it with a new one.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

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I support calling a Great Council. Most of the debate here is about quibbles with the specific wording of the proposed resolution, but really the resolution is a formality. For disclosure, I reviewed the resolution and added in some parts.

I understand the attachment to the status quo. It's worked for a lot of people, myself included, but that isn't a good reason to stick with it. I think we get to a point where it's healthy for the long-term survival of the community to redo things. A type of creative destruction. We've had the Charter for 5 years, and more or less it's the same as it was when I wrote it (with help and input from others!) all that time ago. Things have changed around the edges, but the institutional structure of the region hasn't changed all that much. That stability was good. The Charter was written after a coup, so stability was the whole purpose.

Too much stability is a bad thing. What's happened over the years is that the status quo helped a handful of TSPers stay in top roles, shuffling around different institutions. I'm still doing this! We don't have a deep bench of people to take over roles when we leave. There really aren't many old TSPers around anymore. They might be in Discord or pop in here and there, but they aren't active in a meaningful sense. So we see this repeating pattern of new people getting into Cabinet ministries, failing by the standards set by long-term officeholders.

The new era of TSP is beholden to the standards and hangups of the old era. I mean, how much of our governing system was created specifically to prevent the 2016 coup perpetrators from gaining power? Quite a lot of it. Belschaft, a bit player in the coup, is the only one of those players still around, and he's barely active as it is. Why does the new era need to be constrained by laws designed for a context that no longer exists?

I don't know what people will come up with in a 2022 Great Council. And that's the entire point for me. If this was just about "fixing" the Local Council or reimagining the Cabinet, we'd just pass an omnibus amendment. That's not what I'm looking for when I say I support a GC. I want to see what people do with a blank slate. There are some guardrails in here to make holding a GC more secure (and more comfortable for me to support). But overall, it's a calling for the new era of TSP to take ownership of the region, craft it in their image, and be accountable for upholding and defending a new constitution that they personally wrote. There's a lot of power in that, I can speak from experience.

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I think that systemic constitutional revision after many years of the current Charter is fine and even healthy. I'm a little wary of the nature of Great Councils which seem to pretty much require us to burn it all down and start over, and I'm not sure that we're at the "burn it all down and start over" juncture.

Spoiler

Republic of Lansoon (Pacifica)

(This post was last modified: 05-01-2022, 06:49 PM by Comfed.)

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I don't know how fair it is to say that Great Councils require us to "burn it all down and start over". I know that the Charter uses a particular language when it comes to Great Councils, but I don't think any of us could say for certain how much of a rewrite could reasonably qualify. I mean, surely it's reasonable not to completely rewrite the Criminal Code if it remains fit for purpose, and there are probably similar provisions that also deserve to remain on the books.

I think what would characterise a true Great Council is the intent with which we go into it. In the past there were some Great Councils that were called to address specific policy proposals and I would agree that this is the wrong idea; we have the normal amendment process for that. Instead a Great Council should be an event where we all go with the mindset that everything can be reconsidered and that this is a time to question what makes up the region and how we can make it work better.

I think that we are indeed at a time when we should be thinking about that. Glen is right that current legislators deserve to have an opportunity where they can rebuild the region in a way that works for them -for us, because we are all part of this region-. Yes, that can be done via the normal amendment process, but I can tell you that there is a certain mindset that comes with a Great Council that you cannot otherwise replicate. Ideas can be bolder because we all realise that this is a unique time to go go bold. There are only so many times that we can tweak the same laws over and over again, play with the same government structure over and over again, and I worry that we are reaching a breaking point of dullness.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

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Just as long as we stay defender. Might go as far as to codify that in the preamble of our new constitutional document, whatever that's gonna be.

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

My History

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I don’t know if “defender” is such a key trait in South Pacifican identify that it deserves such level of protection.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum.

Legal Resources:
THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System

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