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Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on March 16, 2025, 06:52:02 PMJust butting in here, but since this is the only Senäts debate going on: what would your attitudes be to the proposal which I think the current SoS has previously championed, i.e. a "deprovincialised Senäts" with 4 (or 3?) Senators elected every Cosa term on a Kingdom-wide basis? That would surely deal with the terrible problem we have at the moment where the majority of Senäts elections are uncontested because both the parties, and active citizens, are very unevenly distributed between provinces

I could see myself supporting this, but it really depends on the details. Most importantly, how are you going to elect these senators? There are a lot of pitfalls that could make this worse than what we have now. STV seems like the obvious choice, but this is quite complex, both in terms of excecution and correctly writing it into law. If that is something that can be overcome then maybe it could work, but that's a big if

Spotify playlist for the (semi)final:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OP3URNzanHoihTjiZFJhK

Instructions for voting on the semifinal here: https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=3765.msg32749#msg32749



Of course the discord chat wont be limited to followers of tmt. I assume there may be discussion on various subjects including the upcoming election results.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 18, 2025, 06:04:31 PMI simply do not believe your argument that the independent and thoughtful consideration of people like Ian and Gluc hasn't affected the course of policy.

Heh, I have a sense that my independent and thoughtful considerations are about to get kicked out of the senate pretty soon, but thanks for the compliment anyway :p

On what basis is this proposal called "Consensus Plan on Reform"?

One issue with the senate in its current form I forgot to mention earlier (although it has been mentioned many times before) and which is a big reason I'm open to reform is that provinces all have the same (1) number of senators, but different number of citizens. That means that citizens in smaller province are relatively better represented in the senate.

That is unfair in itself but it also has unfortunate side effects for the provinces, because we now are forced to design these so that they all have roughly similar immigration, or risk representation becoming even more skewed. In particular, there are good arguments to be made that certain provinces could become more vibrant if they merged, but this always causes an immediate problem because then the citizens of those provinces would give up half of their representation in the senate. Regardless of what direction we want to go with provinces, this debate is always gonna be overshadowed by 'what does this mean for national politics' and that's really not great.


But again, while I'm open to reform, any new system needs to find a way to include these checks and balances that having two house of parliament provides, so straight abolishing the senate with no replacement wouldn't be something I'd support.

Even though Im not a member of Avant, I'm still flattered by the endorsement. Much appreciated.

My opponent provided some interesting questions for me in his campaign thread. You can read my answers in his campaign thread. In the meantime, @þerxh Sant-Enogat I hope you don't mind if I have some questions for you as well.

1. Senators unlike MCs don't represent a party, but a province. Of course you are also the leader of a party. How do you see the balance between representing all the citizens of Cézembre and your partisan interests? As an example, suppose your party enters into a coalition at some point in the future and agrees to a coalition agreement as a part of that. Would you feel bound to vote in accordance with the coalition agreement even on items you personally disagree with? Are there any issues on which you disagree with your party and if so, which ones?

2. Would you be willing to sponsor a sense of the Ziu requesting the government to stop official communications on the site formerly known as twitter?

3. During the 59th Cosa you were PM for the TNC. The TNC signed an agreement preventing MZs from sponsoring amendments to the Organic Law unless approved by a multipartisan committee. How do you reflect on this and is this something that might happen again?

4. What are your thoughts on the CRL and other idea relating to improving quality of legislation and increasing debate and scrutiny on major reforms?

I have more questions, but I had stop myself here for now ;)

Thank you for your question. I'm interested to hear your view on these topics as well. I will also respond with some questions of my own in the other thread :)

Gonna try to keep my answer a bit shorter on the third question. Cézembre isn't really being used by Talossa for it's natural resources. What we contribute to the Kingdom are the contributions of our citizens and it is up to each individual Cézembrean to fill that in to the best of their ability and make the most of their citizenship.

And of course, you don't need to be in politics to do so. Electing the best senator who casts the best votes and provides the best thoughts on legislation is just one small way to contribute.

On fixed term elections:

I'm not fundamentally opposed to this idea. I understand the concerns about holding the government to account if we remove the option of new elections, but the reality is that the time it takes for elections to be organised. If a coalition breaks down it still takes at least more than 2 months, potentially more than 3 before the VoC is failed, new elections are held and a cabinet is seated. Meanwhile, cosa terms itself aren't that long. We have multiple elections per year on average already, so even if a government does fail we dont need to wait that long for voters to have a chance to speak out again. Actually, I really like that under the proposed system the Ziu can basically replace the government midterm. This makes it more likely that we always have a functioning government, without holding additional elections that Talossa doesn't really need.

Again, however, the devil is in the details. The matter of who takes over when the VoC fails is a difficult question and I do see the concerns about just letting the leader of the opposition take over. (Although I also prefer the new definition of opposition over the one that depends entirely on the VoC.) Also as a general rule I dont like when an amendment is passed that requires additional legislation but without that additional legislation being presented yet. In this particular case I don't *think* the changes to the lexhatx will raise new issues, but I'm still not happy about the practice. This is why I abstained on the proposal.

Of course, the proposal has already passed the senate, so I'm not sure this discussion is gonna come up again next term.


Edit, in this thread: https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=3898.msg32756#msg32756, Dien also makes a good point about the implications for the EC.

On bicameralism:

I think there are two closely related reasons for why bicameralism is a good thing. First of all MC's represent a political party while senators represent a province.

Now (perhaps somewhat controversially) I don't think it is representing a province per se that is important here. After all most provinces have citizens of diverse political orientation and different interests and how can one person really represent all those different interests.

The important thing is that the dynamic is different. Because senators don't represent a party that gives them a bit more independence to offer a different perspective. (Of course that effect might not be as strong if a senator also happens to be the leader of a party ;) ) Furthermore the senate has no influence on the composition of the government, which allows people to vote for senators who don't belong to the party they think is most capable of ruling. It is not a give that the party with the best ministers is also the party with the best ideas for legislation, but the cosa elections don;t allow voters to separate between the two.

Secondly, while the cosa is elected every eight months, senators have longer terms. This delay means that if a party suddenly gets a majority in the cosa it will still take a few elections to also get a majority in the senate. This is a good thing, because it could prevent major changes from being enacted in the hype of the moment. Of course, if the country wants to go in a certain direction eventually a majority in the senate will also be elected on that basis and that is great, because that is how democracy works, but it takes a bit longer which gives some more time to reflect if a certain political direction is really a good idea.

Combined this means the Cosa and the Senate provide different perspectives. That is important because if you look at legislation from just one perspective, you might miss something. Over the years we have seen plenty of bills being passed that were rushed and flawed and needed fixing as a result, but weve also seen cases were one house passed a bill but the other house stopped it. To be clear, I'm not opposed to changes, and if a consistent majority of Talossans want the country to move in a certain direction it should, but it is a good thing to have checks and balances first.


That said, I don't think the current system always works as intended. Many provinces are represented by senators who are barely active, elected without opposition or because of blind partisanship. Provincially conducted elections don't always live up to democractic standards. Filling the cosa with active MZs is clearly a problem for several parties as well. So I'm open to reform. MMP sounds very good in theory, but the devil is in the details and if we don't pay very close intention you might end up with a system that's easily exploitable. The idea of an at large senate is also interesting, but again it greatly matters how this senate would be elected.

Whatever the outcome, if there is to be a new system it needs to have these checks and balances that bicameralism provides. Anything else I would not consider voting for.

Ah ok. I suppose that works. I was re-reading the bill and I was confused