No, this isn’t a joke. Yes, I’m actually bringing this forth to the Assembly for consideration. No, pointing pitchforks at me isn’t going to make me reconsider this.

Assembly Resolution to Call A Great Council

 

A resolution to recognize and resolve longstanding government dysfunction and disengagement

The Assembly of the Coalition of the South Pacific,

Recognizing the systematic problems that have continued to plague the South Pacific and its institutions for a lengthy period of time,

Presenting as evidence for this the significant apathy showcased in Assembly debates on even the most controversial of topics, the dearth of promising new talents coming out of the regional pipeline, the uncontested nature of numerous elections for some of the most coveted government position, the insular divide between the gameside and the forumside communities which often leads to hostile interactions between their members, and the low levels of motivation or energy for pursuing any novel initiatives that has gradually seeped into the region,

Believing that these issues will continue to hamper the region’s progress if not swiftly dealt with,

Understanding that during times of great need in the past, the wise constituents of this august chamber have opted to convoke a Great Council, a convention with the aim of identifying and solving the problems that haunted the region during those epochs, with the goal of facilitating the path of further prosperity of the region,

Acknowledging that the current Charter and systems of governance were written by a generation no longer as actively involved in the community as before, and that the newer generations of South Pacificans may have different ideas for the establishment of our government,

Assured that no constitution is perfect in perpetuity and that communities can greatly benefit from beginning anew without the weight of existing law, custom, and precedent limiting possibilities,

Recognizing that constitutional conventions are a ripe opportunity for foreign manipulation both benign and hostile, and as such must include strong safeguards to ensure any new government is formed by true native South Pacificans free of undue foreign influence,

Asserting that the present situation of the South Pacific requires the intervention of a Great Council, which would allow the brightest minds of the region to come together and frankly discuss about the problems at hand, as well as potential solutions to those,

Hereby:

1. Invokes Article XIV(2) of the Charter of the Coalition of the South Pacific and establishes a Great Council, with the goal of rewriting all regional laws in their entirety.
   
2. Designates Kris Kringle as the Chair of the Great Council, charged with maintaining order and decorum and helping guide Assembly debate into rewriting the regional laws.
   
   1. Further appoints The Haughtherlands as the Deputy Chair of the Great Council, tasked with assisting the Chair in carrying out the aforementioned duties.
      
   2. Dictates that should the Chair or the Deputy Chair resign or remain inactive over a period of a week without advance notice, the Great Council may select a replacement by majority vote.
      
3. Mandates that participation in the Great Council be limited to those holding valid legislator status at 1651031999 and who continue to maintain legislator status throughout the duration of the Great Council.
   
4. Authorizes the Chair to grant eligibility exemptions to members of the Coalition they believe to be suitable to partake in the Great Council, unless the Great Council by majority vote denies an exemption.
   
5. Further authorizes the Great Council to expel a participant by majority vote on grounds of the participant engaging in undue foreign influence.
   
6. Reasserts that all existing proscriptions and administrative bans remain in effect throughout the Great Council.
   
7. Provides that additional procedures may be adopted by the participants of the Great Council in a separate resolution at their own discretion, with the proposed resolution requiring a three-fifths majority to be adopted.
   
8. Promulgates that all regional institutions shall continue to function normally as laid out in the pre-existing regional laws for the duration of the Great Council.
   
9. Decrees that regardless of the outcome of the Great Council, all existing treaties and other diplomatic agreements will remain in effect,
   
10. Further decrees that elections for all offices are postponed for the duration of the Great Council and that all vacancies of office be filled according to regular appointment procedures.
    
11. And commands that special elections must be commenced no later than one week following the Great Council’s conclusion, should it lead to the adoption of a new electoral system or a change in the form of government.
    

(This post was last modified: 06-06-2022, 12:06 PM by The Haughtherlands.)

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I'm not like, violently opposed, but I'd want to see what people want to do in this before supporting it. Would be kind of awkward if a GC gets called and then people just twiddle their thumbs cause they don't actually have any ideas. A Great Council isn't actually needed for "brightest minds of the region to come together and frankly discuss about the problems at hand". You can just do that. As PM, you especially can just do that.

And if this is about getting rid of the LC, probably should give them an automatic invite

(This post was last modified: 04-26-2022, 06:02 AM by Nakari.)

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The OP's justification for calling a Great Council don't hold up to closer scrutiny. I'll get into a few of those below, but TL;DR:

• The resolution's view on Great Councils is entirely ahistorical
  
• One of the resolution's justifications is a blatant falsehood
  
• There are several other problems with the resolution as well
  

Acknowledging that the current Charter and systems of governance were written by a generation no longer as actively involved in the community as before

The current Charter was primarily drafted by Sandaoguo, who is the sitting Minister of Foreign Affairs serving under the Prime Ministership of the very author of this resolution!

But the Charter of 2016 is not what we have today. It has been extended, modified, and adapted over time, using its built-in mechanisms of doing so. The 2016 Charter established a framework for governance plus a process for changing it to suit South Pacifican needs without needing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, which what the author is proposing.

The resolution does mention the problem with gameside vs forumside communities, and that is a legitimate criticism of the current system (and personally, I think the Local Council in this form is a failed experiment we should have gotten rid of a long time ago). But that covers one aspect of many that the Charter provides for - courts, legislature, cabinet, security system, citizen rights, etc.. When a car tire is broken, you replace the tire and not the entire car.

Understanding that during times of great need in the past, the wise constituents of this august chamber has opted to convoke a Great Council, a constitutional convention with the objective to rewrite all regional laws in their entirety, or establish a new state for the South Pacific,

This is entirely and utterly ahistorical.

• The Great Council of 2012 was called in response to inactivity and extant problems in the judicial system. It was called not to rewrite all laws, but explicitly to fix aspects thereof.
  
• The Great Council of 2013 was called to clean up the clutter of extant laws, not to rewrite everything.
  
• The January 2015 Great Council was specifically about game-side rights and involvement
  
• The Second Great Council of 2015 was also called with just a few specific topics in mind
  

The big one is the 2016 Great Council, and this one was called for different reasons: TSP had just recovered from an autocoup, with high tensions, and decided to start over completely. In this case you're right, but that was also in a way the worst one: Inactivity at that time was as bad as it hadn't been for years, many people left or got disinterested, most newer people weren't getting sufficiently engaged with (I had to beg and plead to be accepted as citizen), etc. - in other words, it was an absolute shitshow. The Charter that resulted was good, but the process was many months of pain.

Whatever you feel is bad about TSP right now, calling a GC to rewrite everything will be worse. Period.

Asserting that the present situation of the South Pacific requires the intervention of a Great Council, which would allow the brightest minds of the region to come together and frankly discuss about the problems at hand, as well as potential solutions to those,

If you want to get rid of the Local Council (and I would agree with that notion), then put in the work of writing drafts, discussing, negotiating, canvassing etc. rather than just plunging the region into months of darkness.

I could not disagree more with this resolution.

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Other than the points already brought up, I need to know what specific reforms the prime minister wants before even considering voting for a Great Council and whether it is warranted or could be addressed through simple constitutional legislation.

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

My History

(This post was last modified: 04-26-2022, 06:35 AM by Jay Coop.)

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I agree with Nakari, Roavin and Jay. There seems to be a general consensus in the Assembly that the current arrangements for the Local Council and in-game moderation/governance aren’t satisfactory, but if that is the issue we are seeking to resolve by a Great Council then we should be specific and limited in stating that. I’m not aware of any wider constitutional issues which are in need of addressing.

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

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PREVIOUS ROLES

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Former Chief Justice of The High Court (x3)
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs (x2)
Former Chair of the Assembly (x3)
Former Minister of Security (x2)
Former Local Councillor (x2.5)
Former Forum Administrator
Former Minister of Media

(This post was last modified: 04-26-2022, 06:46 AM by Belschaft.)

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The current Charter was primarily drafted by Sandaoguo, who is the sitting Minister of Foreign Affairs serving under the Prime Ministership of the very author of this resolution!

You're talking about someone who had heavily contemplated retiring from the region when you went out, and only agreed to run for MoFA because I reached out to them and nominated them for the position. He's indicated that this is going to be his last hurrah at any sort of Cabinet position. So yes, most of the 2016 generation of TSP that produced our current Charter has left our region or isn't actively tuned in with the region's happenings anymore. Certainly not enough to contemplate running for any sort of elected positions, that's for sure!

Also funny you brought up Glen, since he helped me out while I was writing this thing! In fact, the very clause you're quoting was suggested by him, word for word! So I think it's pretty telling in and of itself.

Whatever you feel is bad about TSP right now, calling a GC to rewrite everything will be worse. Period.

Right, let's break this down.

First off, 2022 TSP is wayyyyyy different than 2016 TSP was. For starters, we're no longer an Independent region. We didn't get couped by someone in the last couple of months. We don't have an entire group of bad-faith actors running around here, trying to influence us for their own gains. We don't have a Cabinet dissatisfed with how the admins are apparently misusing their powers. So that's something of an improvement, if I say!

You know what we have instead? We have around 11000 nations entirely disconnected from our government, despite our absolute best attempts to reach out to them. We have literally no candidates willing enough to step up for serving in the executive, apparent by the plethora of uncontested elections we've had over the last couple of terms. We have the Assembly completely disinterested in the way we work, as evidenced by the lack of debate on even the most controversial of topics over the last couple of months, including this thread. We have no direction, no endgoal, no actual identity to base our regional culture on. These are fundamental problems that the executive can't solve alone, shouldn't solve alone.

That's why I'm doing this. Because I'm honestly tired of feeling like being the only who gives a fuck about what happens to this region. I'm tired of people gasping at the word "Great Council" like it's some sort of forbidden taboo, when it really is not. I don't think so. It's just us self-reflecting on the system in place, to determine whether this is ideal or not. A GC doesn't mean that everything has to go to shit each time we do it. I get why people act like that and I can't really blame them for it either because our previous experience with it turned out to be so sour, but it has been six fucking years. Six years is a long time, long enough for TSP to change into something different.

I don't believe that we'll react the same way as we did six years before. I don't believe that we'll descend into utter chaos once the GC starts. I don't believe that we're going to have tensions run extremely high for us to compare our community to 2015-2016 days. I just want us to self-reflect and ask ourselves the question, "Are we on the right track at the moment?" If that requires no GC for us, great! But considering what our current situation is at the moment, I feel like this is the only way to make people listen.

If you want to get rid of the Local Council (and I would agree with that notion), then put in the work of writing drafts, discussing, negotiating, canvassing etc. rather than just plunging the region into months of darkness.

And if this is about getting rid of the LC

There seems to be a general consensus in the Assembly that the current arrangements for the Local Council and in-game moderation/governance aren’t satisfactory, but if that is the issue we are seeking to resolve by a Great Council then we should be specific and limited in stating that.

This was never about the Local Council. I would obviously prefer an active and functional LC, but it wasn't even in my mind when I started drafting this.

I also didn't get that impression that you can address only specific issues through a GC from reading the Charter. I thought it was either full law rewrite or bust.

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I'd want to see what people want to do in this before supporting it.

 

But that covers one aspect of many that the Charter provides for - courts, legislature, cabinet, security system, citizen rights, etc.. When a car tire is broken, you replace the tire and not the entire car.

 

I need to know what specific reforms the prime minister wants before even considering voting for a Great Council

 

I’m not aware of any wider constitutional issues which are in need of addressing.

The "wider Constitutional issue that needs addressing" is that we have a Charter built for both an in-game NationStates meta and a broader out-of-game-with-in-game-implications technology/communications meta from 2015-6 onwards. Together, these issues are creating persistent inactivity and chaos within our government. Internal political schisms won't drive activity to the same extent as they used to, and issues with executive functioning aren't ideological wars between Raiders and Defenders, it's the higher demands on executive government in contemporary NS and the higher effort to build engaging communities required by platform and technology shifts.

It is undeniable that interest in executive government is collapsing and that legislative activity in the Assembly is in an even worse state. There are two ways of diagnosing this issue:

• The institutions themselves are fine, but there has been persistent dysfunction in them for years, which has then resulted in a failure to integrate and retain new members.
  
• The way our institutions themselves are structured is part of the problem with activity and retention.
  

The fact that issues with inactivity and chaos has persisted over years, with activity spots driven by particularly dedicated and/or skilled Prime Ministers/Cabinets being brief and eventually fading, indicates a structural issue and discredits option 1. From my perspective, the reason for this issue is a structural one, having to do with how we organize our institutions themselves, rather than a belief that South Pacificans are inherently not equipped for the task of efficient and effective governance. An overhaul to executive government itself, and the executive's relationship to the Assembly and other institutions, is necessary to empower and enable genuine South Pacifican leadership.

For those who are concerned about a lack of topics at a Great Council, I'll put forward my personal (brief) list of topics we could consider. In fact, more topics can and will be added (and some likely not considered, as I doubt many are going for WA-only citizenship), but from my perspective the Local Council would be only one of many things that needs to get reworked during this Great Council!

• 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?
  

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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Recognizing the systematic problems that have continued to plague the South Pacific and its institutions for the longest of times,

Have these issues really plagues the region for "the longest of times". I wonder if a more qualified descriptor would be better here.

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I know we've turned Great Councils into this taboo topic that should never be brought up, but from a cultural standpoint a Great Council is an excellent opportunity to question what the region is and what we want from it, which is something that I'm not sure would happen via the normal Assembly process.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
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• 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?
  

We've seen debate on several of these issues already. Genuine question as someone who's never been through one of these things — how would a Great Council spur more debate and activity?

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-snip-

We've seen debate on several of these issues already. Genuine question as someone who's never been through one of these things — how would a Great Council spur more debate and activity?

When the last great council was underway, I was returning from about two years of inactivity. My return was unrelated to the GC convening, but there was a lot of activity surrounding it as everyone knew they had a choice and voice on what the new government would look like. I anticipate that if meaningful reform is achieved, there will be a continuation of increased activity for, at least, a couple of election cycles before the new "cornerstones" of the community emerge and settle in.
 

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I am watching this debate with interest. While I think several valid issues have been pointed out, I am skeptical of the need for a complete overhaul.

-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

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