MIA Leaders - What to do and how to do it. (Citizen discussion and law proposal)

[donsig]

Originally posted by Cyc
Donsig, I'm listening to the will of the people now, and I hear that they don't want to bend over backwards and jump through hoops to get build queues posted. They want Govenors who care.

Then they should elect governors who care or change the constitution. BTW - I am a citizen - one of the people - and I do not consider citizens giving input to be bending over backwards.

 

[Cyc]

HMMM. Sounds like you always had a Govenor who cared...

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by donsig
Well, it may be a little late, but yeah, I have a comment or two.

First of all, let me quote from our new constitution:
quote:

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Article G. All offices will be filled via election with terms lasting one calendar month.
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Here is the constitution.

Since there is nothing in the constitution about replacing officials there is no constitutional basis for the suggested changes. So, this begs the question of judicial review. Was this change formally reviewed by the judiciary? This leads to another question, what good is judicial review when it is the Chief Justice writing the bulk of the laws? I do not mean to suggest that Shaitan is abusing his new office but is there not an obvious conflict of interest here?

To get back to the propsed standard, this is the democarcy game and there can be no democracy without elections. While it is true that we have little to go on when voting for individuals we must still learn to live with the results! When we start giving the president discretionary power to remove government officials we are tampering with the very foundations of democracy!

Those are good points and I will try to address each one. (Note that these are my opinions and reflect how I would rule in a Judicial Review. They are not necessarily the position of the Judiciary as only a full Review can make that official.):

Constitution, Article G: All offices are filled each month via poll, per the Constitution. This article is not a guarantor of employment. That is, it does not mean that an elected official must remain in that office for a month. Individual positions are also filled on an as needed basis according to rules in the COL and COS. These are interim appointments and not part of the monthly elections specified in the Constitution.

No Constitutional basis for replacing officials: There is no Constitutional precept against removing and/or replacing officials. The Constitution does not specify either way, leaving this up to the COL and COS or a Constitutional Amendment, if necessary.

Judicial Review / Conflict of Interest: On the contrary, authoring the proposal guarantees a thorough Review (at least when it's me doing the writing ). As the rule does not directly affect my office, authority or position I can't see it as a conflict of interest. However, I agree that a gut reaction could feel it was one simply because I was the author. That is, it's possible that people could determine that I gave precedence to an outside agenda over my Judicial duties. I will go half way here and defer my Review until the other members of the Judiciary have given their rulings.

Democracy only by elections: Democracy is the will of the people. The will of the people can change. I can guarantee that the will of the people will change when an elected official abandons his/her office without notice for 7 consecutive days. This rule is reflective of that acknowledged and accepted fact.

Presidential discretionary powers: Yes, these powers are discretionary but they are defined and regulated. The Pres can't just fire somebody on a whim. That person has to have shown conclusively that they are not fit for office.

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by Chieftess
What happens if you start the process and they come back? (i.e., right in the middle of selecting a new governor).

Once they've been removed from office that's it. They no longer have that office.

 

[donsig]

Constitution, Article G

Shaitan you are using the CoL and CoS to argue that the proposed change is constitutional. This is not convincing me that this change is constitutional.

Here's a quote from the preamble:

that rules, regulations, and laws should be established to facilitate the active participation of the people

Does this proposed change live up to the spirit of the preamble?

Here is article G again:

All offices will be filled via election with terms lasting one calendar month.

The darn thing says all offices. Ok, I even looked up *term*: the limited time during which something lasts. The person elected to an office (and this should be all offices) holds that office for a month. The constitution does not say the term is *until the citizens change their minds*.

No Constitutional basis for replacing officials

We established in term two when Grey Fox resigned that we must accept resignations. In such cases we do need a mechanism for replacement. However, the proposed change is about removing a lawfully elected official. There is no constitutional basis for removing officials except for the time honored and generally accepted method of removing an official for unconstitutional acts and article A guarantees the right to a fair trial. The proposed standard allows an official to be summarily removed without recourse to a fair trial.

Judicial Review / Conflict of Interest

Back to the dictionary: conflict of interest: a conflict between the private interest and the public obligations of a person in an official position (BTW. I'm using an American Heritage Dictionary, second college edition)

Shaitan's private interest is to see this change instituted. He wrote the change and he lobbied for it. His public obligation is to uphold the constitution. Assuming that something written by the Chief Justice is constitutional because it was written by the Chief Justice is not an assumption I am willing to make.

Democracy only by elections

Yes, the people do change their minds and they have every right to do so. What they do not have the right to do is remove a duly elected official because they changed their mind or think they made a mistake in electing him or her. If the people want to remove an official constitutionally then they must initiate an investigation on the grounds that the official has violated the constitution, find him or her guilty of such and have him or her impeached.

BTW, if it is ok to abandon an office with notice why is it so bad to do so without notice?

Presidential discretionary powers

If the person has already conclusivly shown that he or she is unfit for office then impeaching him or her should be a piece of cake and this proposal would be not only unconstitutional but unnecessary as well.

If an offical has already missed seven days that is generally two turn chats. We should have mechanisms in place to ensure the functioning of the government so that all needed instructions are in place every turn chat. If we do this then we can survive a missing official for seven days and the time it would take to conduct an investigation and trial.

 

[Eklektikos]

Ok, I've hopefully made amends for my pathetic excuse for a Review in the the council vote thread and now I would like to post a suggestion with my "private citizen" hat on.

Point 3: After an official has been absent from the fora for x days without having appointed someone to act in their place, he/she is officially AWOL (Absent Without Leave).

Point 4: Once an official has gone AWOL, any citizen may require the Judiciary to post a poll to determine whether the official is in contravention of the constitution. This poll will follow the format set out in the standards relating to investigations. In this instance prior discussion and Judicial Review will not be required.

I propose that this should replace the additional standards currently under discussion. I would be inclined to make x = 14, as that is approximately half of a term's duration.

Obviously this would not affect the rights of the citizenry to request an investigation on this subject at any time before an official becomes officially AWOL, but should simply speed up the process after that point.

 

[Almightyjosh]

Yes, the people do change their minds and they have every right to do so. What they do not have the right to do is remove a duly elected official because they changed their mind or think they made a mistake in electing him or her.

I think what you are missing is that we are not talking about leaders that are doing a bad job, or who are late with deadlines or ignore polls, we are talking about leaders who ARE JUST NOT THERE. The people may LOVE what that leader does but if they are NOT THERE DOING IT, then it becomes a mute point. If you really had the 'will of the people' in mind, then you wouldn't be opposing a change that would allow us to replace un-rulers with newly elected rulers, instead of the haphazard appointments and control by people who we're not elected for the position AT ALL.

 

[Almightyjosh]

P.S. I wouldn't trust an American dictionary, they spell things funny.

 

[Cyc]

I would like to make another point about this mess. Above Donsig quoted the preamble:

Here's a quote from the preamble:



quote:
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that rules, regulations, and laws should be established to facilitate the active participation of the people
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Simply stated, as it was meant to be, it says that the rules, etc. should help the people actively participate in the game. MIA Leaders do not help people at all. In fact, they clog up the channels that we need open by their non-participation.

OK? Here it is in English...The addendum stated in the poll helps the people actively participate in the game by allowing them to remove dead-beat Leaders, who should be helping facilitate the active particpation of the people, but are not. There, straight out of the Preamble. You can't get much more Constitutional than that.

 

[Cyc]

Eklektikos, I like your new approach to the situation, but that's probably because it the same thing as the addendum in the poll, only you've dressed it up differently. Your first posting of the review was done correctly. Go with your first instincts. Don't second guess your best qualities.

 

[Eklektikos]

The addendum allows the President to remove dead beat leaders. I'm generally in favour of giving our elected leader more powers, as I perceive the position to be lacking clout, but I believe that the citizenry as a whole should make decisions about removing leaders rather than making it a unilateral decision.

 

[Eklektikos]

My approach is very, very similar, I grant you, but the crucial difference is that it guarantees that the people have the final say in the matter and uses a pre-existing constitutional mechanism to effect the removal of the absentee.

 

[donsig]

Eklektikos's approach is also similar to the point i was trying to make. If the citizens want to remove a leader who is missing then they should impeach him. Give the leader a chance for a fair trial. If the leader truly is MIA and a deadbeat then he or she won't even show up at the investigation and the impeachment should move along easily.

Removing an official by impeachment is generally agreed to be acceptable and constitutional. We really do not ned a new rule for this.

We should be concentrating on how to ensure that proper instructions are put in place when an official does disappear.

BTW, I congratulate our Public Defender on having the courage to change his review. While I obviously agree with the new review I admire more the fact that he is able to publicly say his initial review did not take all issues into account.

 

[Cyc]

OK, I see the discussion has drifted from the issue being constitutional... to the appropriate action taken being within accepted constituional parameters. No fair changing horses mid-stream. To this last shift of opinion, I say that the process of impeachment will do nothing but glorify the non-particpating Leader and lengthen the time it takes to bring relief to the constituents that have been without assistance long enough to initiate this process. So now Donsig, who wants to streamline the ruleset, asks us to make rules on how to ensure instructions are posted to carry us through times of neglect (how many rules will that take?) plus more rules to govern MIA impeachments. I'm sure there would be more rules to make these rules accpetable too.

Ah, good. Done with the first paragraph...I'm going to post this and give it a rest until Bill_in_PDX gives his review. Hopefully he's still pissed off about PDX being sacked.

Here is article G again:


quote:
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All offices will be filled via election with terms lasting one calendar month.
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It says "All 'offices' will be filled". This is not stating that a person elected to an office will be in a term lasting 1 month, it states the CYClical duration of the office's term is one month, and then another election is held. If a person gets elected to an office and then resigns the next day, the term of the office still lasts till the end of the month, and we need a new person to fill the office because of that.

Now we go to Article J of the Constitution. Please don't confuse this with Section J of the COS.

Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will of the people.

MIA Leaders don't plan or act according to the will of the people. Even if a Govenor was to put a queue in place for the cities in his Province that was 8 deep, if the citizens in one or two of those cities request a change in the queues because of a new development in the game, how is the MIA going to respond? How will he plan for the citizens concerns from that point on? He won't, you know it and I know it. We could always let Donsig determine what is best for those ciutizens, but he is not accountable for his actions. He's just a citizen living in a different Province. So maybe we could let Donsig make another rule about which citizen would come closest to being accountable to these people, for making the major decisions. Then we could have more rules on how THAT person should be responsible for making sure everything went the way Donsig wanted it. My point being that these MIA's can't possibly abide by Article J of the Constitution on a consistant basis.

And finally, (yes, I'm running out of steam) to put a personal touch on this, I would say that in most discussions had by Patriots about Constitutions and devotion to Country, the concept of the sacrificing of the one for the good of the whole is passed around quite a bit. Even if that is in reference to self-sacrificing (which we don't see much of from MIA's). I believe this principle could be applied here as surely, the loss of one's position (with the obligatory bullet-biting), is the least one could do for the benefit of a whole Province or even a Nation. We can't keep protecting the rights of people who flagrantly ignore the rights of the citizens they are supposed to aid.

There, I'm done.

 

[Almightyjosh]

hear here!!

 

[Eklektikos]

new Article G discussion thread has been opened to clarify how it should be interpreted.

 

[donsig]

The discussion has not drifted from the constitutionality of the proposed change to Section J. I have already stated that it is unconstitutional for TWO reasons. First, the leaders are elected for a term of one month. and inherent in that clause is the idea that they can remain in office for the duration of their term assuming they do not engage in illegalities. The second reason is that the officials are removed without a fair trial.

The intent of this rule change is to quickly remove officials who are not doing their constitutional duty. The intent is good but circumventing the constitution is not. The ends do not justify the means.

Yes, impeachment will lengthen the time it takes to replace an official. However, as I pointed out before, this proposed change still allows a full week (generally two turn chats) to go by before action is begun. My sugestion was that we concentrate on mechanisms for ensuring that needed instructions get into the turn chat thread for every turn chat. That relieves our suffering citizens much better than the rule change in question or impeachment.

Please note Cyc that I said mechanisms[i/] not rules. We can take steps to ensure that the business of government runs smoothly every turn chat without making rules. We have spilled much ink so to speak over this proposed rule change. If we'd have put one tenth of that effort into discussing the build queues for Ameri and New Cormyr they'd be in place and we'd be talking about more important things (like the war).

As for the point of your CYClical paragraph it is lost on me. Since the governor of Ameri hasn't resigned we do not need to replace him for that reason. In fact we do not need to replace him until he is constitutionaly removed from office.

Cyc, if you want to impeach Plexus under article J then do it. Not only is it constitutional you'd have an easy time convincing me to vote for removal from office. As I said earlier Cyc I'm not making any more rules just trying to live by the ones we have. If the citizens were speaking out and letting their wishes known then it would be a simple matter to determine what the build queues of Ameri should be - and it wouldn't really matter if the governor was MIA or not. It also would not matter who was accountable for making decisions - since the people would have spoken.

We can't keep protecting the rights of people who flagrantly ignore the rights of the citizens they are supposed to aid.

Even when an official is MIA the citizens are free to speak out. Once we decide to stop protecting a citizen's rights for reason A we open ourselves to doing so for reasons B, C and D as well.