Discussion: declaring a coup

[Hyronymus]

Explanation
As you may have noticed some people of the Yasutan nation are inquiring into the effects of a coup. The Yasutan Constitution does cover the principles of declaring a coup and the effects it has on elected people but it may be necessary to think things over.


Coups and the Constitution

Section 2 – Coup
Officials may be removed from office by a Coup. To declare a Coup, any citizen may post a thread in the citizen forum declaring a coup against an official or group of officials. If two other citizens support the coup, a poll is posted asking if the citizens support the official(s) targeted by the coup. This poll is private, single-choice, and must be set to expire in 4 days.

If the number of citizens that voted to not support the officials exceeds by number of citizens that voted to support the officials by at least one and a half as many votes (a 3/5 majority), the coup is successful. The citizen who originally called for the coup immediately replaces the official targeted by the coup. If more than one official is targeted, the citizen may choose which office they take. The citizens removed from office may not be reappointed to any office for 7 days.

If the coup fails, the citizen calling for the coup is removed from any elected office they hold. They may not be appointed to any office for 7 days. They may not call for another coup for the remainder of the current term.

Discussion
There are several parts of the Constitution concerning a coup that we may have to think about again. Allow me to highlight these sections and question their justness.

[...] Officials may be removed from office by a Coup. To declare a Coup, any citizen may post a thread in the citizen forum declaring a coup against an official or group of officials. [...]

First point: Do we consider the Designated Players (DP's) to hold an Office? Second point: Are members of an Office and DP's excluded from the right to declare a coup against Officers in the same or another Office or other DP's? I'm asking this question in relation to a reply from DaveShack, made in the topic of the Supreme Court of Yasutan Term 3:

Maybe someone else should make the initial call for a coup, then there isn't a net change in the number of DPs.

I strongely believe that Officers and DP's cannot be excluded from this right. Regardless of their Office or being DP they are citizens of Yasutan.

[...]The citizen who originally called for the coup immediately replaces the official targeted by the coup. If more than one official is targeted, the citizen may choose which office they take.[...]

Do people who declare the coup have the right to refuse taking the position of the targeted official? Or, can they assign the position of the targeted position to someone else. And if the answer to this question is positive, should the person who declares the coup inform the citizens who will be given the position of the targeted official in advance or afterwards?

At this moment this is all I can think of that's truly worth some scrutiny.

 

[ori]

Tricky one - so I'll post my opinion here rather than the Judiciary thread which I was about to do...

Is a DP an official?
Yes sure he/she is we only vote for officials don't we? Actually it is quite straight forward:
Offices are defined in quite a lot of places around here (we might want to think about an initiative that gathers all of them sometime):
The Constitution defines the Judiciary's officials, The Tribal Government defines the Chieftain and the Elders, the Warlord has been defined in an initiative I am too lazy to find and the DPs are defined only in the The Election Act.
Now this act specifies that DPs are not considered "elected officials" but that does not mean a DP is not an "official".

Can we have a coup against a DP? Why not? The Tribal Government just says "official or group of officials" not "elected official" against whom you can declare a coup...

Who can declare a coup against a DP? Any citizen, that is clear but what happens to an official who stages a successful coup? He gets the office of the one removed.
Does he have to leave his old office? The Judiciary last term decided that someone who holds an elected office can be appointed to another office and hold both - so we can assume that this is true also for claiming another office after a coup, so the initiator of a successful coup can hold two offices.

If a DP initiates a successful coup against another DP this of course would lead to a DP who has to have a split personality but hey

An interesting further question is what happens to a vacant DP spot when the coup fails or the successful DP steps down from his old spot to take on the new one (can the Chieftain name a replacement?)...

Does someone who declares the coup have the right to refuse an office? No and I don't believe he should (of course what will we do if he just resigns the next day?, so in effect the answer is yes, but I'll ignore that ). This law has been written so that people can decide whether the incumbent is worse than the initiator of the coup, so we have to have someone stand for election as a replacement at the outset, of course we could make a rule that just says that the initiator has to name a candidate (who accepts the nomination) - but then we should also include a penalty for both initiator and candidate if the coup fails.

 

[DaveShack]

My comment was directed towards the people who might be considering a coup now. If more than one of citizen think a coup is justified, it would be advantageous for the group to have someone who doesn't hold an office be the one who requests the coup.

The general discussion in this thread looks like it will be very interesting indeed. Considering the style of government we have is Tribalism, it's not all that surprising that the rules would be a bit chaotic. It might have been a lot of fun if a coup had been attempted before the discussion on what should happen -- then we'd be acting out the chaos in real time.

 

[fed1943]

I think Ori is right, that is, a DP can be the target of a coup,any citizen being
or not Officer can start a coup and the leader of the success coup, just by
said event itself, replaces the target of the coup, whatever he/she has another
Office or not.
The only point that is not clear is if the concept of "vacancy" fits DP Pool,
because there is no fixed number of needed Offices/DPs.(Obvious, this just
cares if coup is unsuccessful).

 

[Joe Harker]

But is a dp an office? and therefore can you have a coup against a dp?

 

[ravensfire]

A couple of thoughts on this.

First - DP's are not an elected official, and I would argue, are not an official at all! It's more of a game construct, that serves as a bridge between the meta-game and the Civ 4 game. As such, I don't feel they are targettable by a Coup.

As the drafter, I can certainly say that was not my intention. Coups were there to remove people from the elected offices only.

Second - we do have a mechanism to remove someone from the DP.

The DP Manager may also post a poll requesting that DP be removed from the pool. This is a private poll, lasting 4 days. If more than 60% of citizen vote in favor of removal, the citizen is removed from the DP pool immediately.

If there is someone that you don't want to see in the DP Pool, petition the DP Pool Manager (DaveShack) to post a removal poll. Consider this - all the candidates were passed recently with comfortable numbers.

Perhaps an alternate approach would be for the officials affected to send a PM to a DP they have an issue with seeking an explanation, an apology and a desire to do better. If that doesn't work, something more public seeking the same. We do require our DP's to maintain a log just so we can determine if things were done correctly. If mistakes are made - own up to 'em and move on. I certainly made more than a few my first few times playing.

Mistakes, oversites and flat out ignoring instructions happen. It's upsetting to the citizens and worse for affected officials. Getting bent out of shape honestly won't help things. Think of it (in RP terms) as your messenger to the Capital got attacked, and now you've got to recover from it.

-- Ravensfire

 

[GenMarshall]

I see it as pointless to try to stage a coup against an offical such as the DPs as they are considered not officals within the Demogame.