The Digital Terpelaziuns Act

[Sir Lüc]

WHEREAS, the current legislation around Terpelaziuns is not fit for purpose, and more specifically

WHEREAS, it seems thought for Living Cosas of the Ben Era, which are long gone, and

WHEREAS, it does not reflect the actual practice of Terpelaziuns as questions posed on an online board, and

WHEREAS, it is peppered with several minor oddities, such as undefined acronyms, intrusions by one branch of the State into another, and inconsistent terminology, and

WHEREAS, it may be additionally helpful to further formalise modern practice into law, such as responses by junior ministers, so

THEREFORE BE IT ENACTED by the Ziu of the Kingdom of Talossa, that El Lexhatx Title H Section 1.2, which currently reads:

1.2. The Cosă authorises a question and answer period during Living Cosăs. This will be called "Terpelaziuns" ('enquiries') or, for short, "Terps", or "Question Time". During Terpelaziuns, each MC may ask any other MC one question (plus a follow-up), and expect to receive some sort of answer. The Opposition Leader shall put the first question. Questions shall alternate between Government and Opposition members until all MCs on one side or the other have spoken. The remaining MCs may then put questions. Questions will be politely phrased in the third person and directed at the Speaker. Order of Questioners will be determined on an ad hoc basis by the Speaker.
    1.2.1. Any Member of the Cosă (MC) or Senator may at any time between the First and Last Clark of a Cosă Term, table in "The Ziu" board on Witt, or its equivalent, a "c (PQ)" or "Terp" in a new thread or its equivalent.
    1.2.2. The PQ or Terp may ask one question to a named Member of the Government relating to Public Affairs connected with their Ministry or on matters of administration for which they are officially responsible.
    1.2.3. There is no limit to the number of PQs or Terps a MC or Senator may submit in any given Clark.
    1.2.4. Any PQ or Terp that is submitted by a MC or Senator in accordance with the provisions of H.1.2., must be answered by the named Minister within seven (7) days of the question being tabled. Should the Minister be unavailable to answer the question within the seven (7) days, the question shall be redirected to the Seneschal or his/her appointed Deputy who shall be granted a further seven (7) days to answer the aforementioned question. With the agreement of the questioner, there may be a extension of seven (7) days on top of this period. However, the period from the asking of the question to the answering of the question, shall in no circumstances exceed twenty one (21) days.
    1.2.5. For the purpose of H.1.2.4., "unavailable" means being unable to access Witt, or its equivalent, for an acceptable and reasonable reason. Having logged into, or visited Witt, or its equivalent, during the seven day period, and having not seen, or ignored the PQ or Terp, shall not constitute being unavailable. (c) This provision shall not apply PQs or Terps, which refer to matters of Security or Defence of His Majesty's Realm and/or any project(s), correspondence, or activities, in which the Government has deemed, and classified as confidential, or which in its release may damage the Kingdom in any shape or form. Such questions may not be answered by any Minister.
    1.2.6. The Minister must answer the question in the same thread or its equivalent as the original question and the questioner may ask a reasonable number of supplementary questions (as determined by the presiding officer), in which the provisions of H.1.2. apply, with the seven days starting from the date each supplementary question is asked.
    1.2.7. Failure to answer a question within the given timeframe shall constitute an offence, and a Minister, if found guilty of such an offence, will be subject to a punishment at the discretion of the Courts.
    1.2.8. It shall be a defence to the Minister if the questioner, notwithstanding any other legitimate defences, did not, or failed to:
        1.2.8.1. correctly title his/her question
        1.2.8.2. ask a clear question. E.g. an ambiguous question, in which the Minister tried to clarify, but failed to do so in the time frame, and did not subsequently answer.
        1.2.8.3. post his/her question in the correct board
        1.2.8.4. engage with the Minister in trying to answer his/her question
        1.2.8.5. direct the question to one named Minister.

be stricken in full and replaced with the following:

1.2   A Terpelaziun is a written enquiry to a named Member of the Government (henceforth, "the questioned Minister") relating to Public Affairs connected with their Ministry or on matters of administration for which they are officially responsible.
    1.2.1   Any Member of the Cosă or Senator may pose a Terpelaziun at any time between the first Clark of a term and the subsequent publishing of a Writ of Dissolution.
        1.2.1.1   Terpelaziuns are posed by opening a new thread containing the questions on Wittenberg, in a single board jointly designated by the Túischac'h and Mençei.
        1.2.1.2   Terpelaziuns shall be politely phrased in the third person and addressed to the presiding officer of the questioner's House (e.g. "esteemed Túischac'h/Mençei") - or, if the Terpelaziun is being posed by a presiding officer, to the whole House ("esteemed Members of the Cosă/Senators").
        1.2.1.3   The presiding officer of the questioner's House - or, if the Terpelaziun is being posed by a presiding officer, the presiding officer of the other House - shall ensure compliance with the provisions of this article and oversee the question-and-answering process. Henceforth in this article, the person so identified shall be termed "the presiding officer".
        1.2.1.4   There is no limit to the number of Terpelaziuns a Member of the Cosă or Senator may submit in any given Clark.
        1.2.1.5   There is no hard limit to the number of questions a single Terpelaziun may contain, except that the presiding officer may refuse Terpelaziuns that are unreasonably long, or that span overly different topics.
        1.2.1.6   Terpelaziuns may not be posed during Months of Recess, except by leave of the presiding officer and consent of the questioned Minister.
            1.2.1.6.1   Terpelaziuns still pending (at any stage) at the beginning of a Month of Recess, or at the Dissolution of the Cosă, shall be answered as normal.
    1.2.2   Once a Terpelaziun is submitted by a Member of the Cosă or Senator in accordance with the provisions of this article, it shall be answered by the questioned Minister within seven days, except for provisions extending the deadline as described below.
        1.2.2.1   Junior members of the questioned Minister's ministry may ask leave to reply to the Terpelaziun in the questioned Minister's stead, due to unavailability or due to the question falling under the junior member's purview.
        1.2.2.2   The questioned Minister, a junior member of the questioned Minister's ministry, or the Seneschal, may negotiate with the questioner any extensions to the deadline, as long as the total additional negotiated time does not exceed seven days. The presiding officer shall grant any such extensions upon ascertaining the questioner's consent.
        1.2.2.3   Should the questioned Minister be unavailable to answer the Terpelaziun within the initial or extended deadline, the question shall be redirected to the Seneschal, or to a junior member of the questioned Minister's ministry, who shall be granted a further seven days to answer the Terpelaziun.
            1.2.2.3.1   "Unavailable" shall be taken to mean an inability to access Wittenberg for an acceptable and reasonable reason. Having logged into, or visited Witt, or its equivalent, during the seven day period, and having not seen, or ignored the PQ or Terp, shall not constitute being unavailable.
    1.2.3   The questioned Minister, or other applicable official as described above, must answer the Terpelaziun in the same thread as the original question, and the questioner may ask a reasonable number of supplementary questions, as determined by the presiding officer.
        1.2.3.1   All provisions described in the previous section shall apply to the first (round of) supplementary question(s) as if they were a new Terpelaziun.
        1.2.3.2   Once the first (round of) supplementary question(s) have been answered, the floor shall be considered open to contributions from other Members of the Cosă and Senators. Any questions posed in this stage shall not be bound by any formal time constraints.
    1.2.4   Failure to answer a Terpelaziun or a supplementary question within the deadlines described in this article may be declared by the presiding officer to constitute Contempt of the Ziu, except in the cases outlined below.
        1.2.4.1   The questioner shall engage with the questioned Minister in answering the Terpelaziun, by providing any required clarifications within a reasonable timeframe.
        1.2.4.2   The questioned Minister is excused from answering Terpelaziuns that, as judged by the presiding officer: do not fall under the purview of their portfolio, or are not clearly labelled as a Terpelaziun; or are ambiguous, unclear, or poorly formatted; or do not otherwise comply with the provisions of this article.
        1.2.4.3   Terpelaziuns which refer to matters of Security or Defence of His Majesty's Realm and/or any project(s), correspondence, or activities, in which the Government has deemed, and classified as confidential, or which in its release may damage the Kingdom in any shape or form, may not be answered by any Minister.

Ureu q'estadra så,

Sir Lüc da Schir (MC-IND/FreeDem)

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

We really have to stop creating enduring arguments here, Sir Luc. Should this pass then it will be the first thing to be targetted for reversal. There is no reason to reduce the amount of terpelaziuns the Opposition can ask.

[Sir Lüc]

Trying to finish up a load of unfinished bill drafts that have been sitting in my Google Drive since as far back as November 2023, when I posted this after stating my goal to clean up Title H of El Lexhatx. This is one of them, which was basically ready to go last February, not quite sure why I parked it.



Seeking input on a few things, which I'm not married to and I'm open to change:

1.2.1.3 proposes that if the Tuischac'h wishes to post a Terp, the Mençei is in charge of policing it, and viceversa. This would probably make past me shudder, but in practice I think it's no big deal especially because we don't really do deputy presiding officers. I considered "what happens when a presiding officer asks a question" to be one of the grey areas of the current law, FWIW.

1.2.1.4 puts a flexible cap on Terps per member per month. I'm not at all married to this, but I thought it would be important to put some sort of (high) cap, so we stop with the usual midterm thing of the government of the day complaining about too many of questions (and potentially the Túischac'h being the fall guy for allowing them thanks to the current language). I also kinda wanted to make the position of Leader of the Opposition matter something, to be honest.
For the record, this specific language was written in February when the shoe was on the other foot; I now see that this would allow the current Leader of the Opposition to ask just 7 questions per month (1 base + 2 for his seats + 4 for being leader), when he actually asked 9 this month so far, 10 last month and 6 the month before. This is a lot of questions, but with the important caveat that nobody submitted any others, so in my personal opinion this amount of questions by a single member was clearly warranted. My suggestion is that either we forget about the cap, or we make regular use of the provision in 1.2.1.4.3 that allows more Terps if the minister is ok with it (meaning the Government can refuse extra Terps at its own risk), or we add a "neutral pool" of, say, 5 questions per month that anyone is allowed to draw from once their allocation is over, first-come-first-serve, which should allow for all ministers to receive (more than) a question per month.
I was also thinking about an alternate way of capping questions, by holding monthly threads of questions to ministers, with a different set of ministers up for questioning each week and every MC/Senator allowed a question to each minister during that week; but maybe this is too complicated or too much of a departure to stick.

1.2.1.6.1 forbids Terps during Months of Recess, again, unless the minister is okay with it. This echoes similar language I put ages ago in the Standing Rules of the Senate, where business is only transacted when a Clark is underway, because that's when people typically pay attention. I am also not married to this, but thought it made sense if the Ziu is supposed to be on recess.

1.2.2 and 1.2.3 basically formalise things we already do, including making sure the law reflects the existence of deputies, and the back-and-forth process.

1.2.4 is mostly already current practice, except for Contempt of the Ziu, which I included instead of the previous "punishment at the discretion of the Courts", which eeh, sounded a bit arbitrary and unnecessary to me. (Why involve the Courts in a process between Ziu and Government which already has an arbiter in the middle?)

[Sir Lüc]

We really have to stop creating enduring arguments here, Sir Luc. Should this pass then it will be the first thing to be targetted for reversal. There is no reason to reduce the amount of terpelaziuns the Opposition can ask.

It took me a little long to write up the explanatory text, sorry. Please take a look at what I wrote there in full; I am very open to canning the whole provision, which as I mentioned was envisioned when I was not in Government.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

For the record, this specific language was written in February when the shoe was on the other foot; I now see that this would allow the current Leader of the Opposition to ask just 7 questions per month (1 base + 2 for his seats + 4 for being leader), when he actually asked 9 this month so far, 10 last month and 6 the month before. This is a lot of questions, but with the important caveat that nobody submitted any others, so in my personal opinion this amount of questions by a single member was clearly warranted. My suggestion is that either we forget about the cap, or we make regular use of the provision in 1.2.1.4.3 that allows more Terps if the minister is ok with it (meaning the Government can refuse extra Terps at its own risk), or we add a "neutral pool" of, say, 5 questions per month that anyone is allowed to draw from once their allocation is over, first-come-first-serve, which should allow for all ministers to receive (more than) a question per month.
I was also thinking about an alternate way of capping questions, by holding monthly threads of questions to ministers, with a different set of ministers up for questioning each week and every MC/Senator allowed a question to each minister during that week; but maybe this is too complicated or too much of a departure to stick.

Yes, I disagree with the cap.
But I wholeheartedly agree that other members of the Opposition need to ask questions.
Until they do, I will continue to do what I believe is a vital function of our system of government.

[Sir Lüc]

For the record, this specific language was written in February when the shoe was on the other foot; I now see that this would allow the current Leader of the Opposition to ask just 7 questions per month (1 base + 2 for his seats + 4 for being leader), when he actually asked 9 this month so far, 10 last month and 6 the month before. This is a lot of questions, but with the important caveat that nobody submitted any others, so in my personal opinion this amount of questions by a single member was clearly warranted. My suggestion is that either we forget about the cap, or we make regular use of the provision in 1.2.1.4.3 that allows more Terps if the minister is ok with it (meaning the Government can refuse extra Terps at its own risk), or we add a "neutral pool" of, say, 5 questions per month that anyone is allowed to draw from once their allocation is over, first-come-first-serve, which should allow for all ministers to receive (more than) a question per month.
I was also thinking about an alternate way of capping questions, by holding monthly threads of questions to ministers, with a different set of ministers up for questioning each week and every MC/Senator allowed a question to each minister during that week; but maybe this is too complicated or too much of a departure to stick.

Yes, I disagree with the cap.
But I wholeheartedly agree that other members of the Opposition need to ask questions.
Until they do, I will continue to do what I believe is a vital function of our system of government.

That's absolutely fair and I will gladly remove the provision from the bill.

I realise it sounds implausible that this was thought of months ago, so for the sake of transparency feel free to check the draft history of the bill on Google Docs, which shows that language was inserted on January 29: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14SWtkR3C21hZlmrls-WSkI7hGUYzKV2ty30RcZwcPAY/edit?usp=sharing

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

For the record, this specific language was written in February when the shoe was on the other foot; I now see that this would allow the current Leader of the Opposition to ask just 7 questions per month (1 base + 2 for his seats + 4 for being leader), when he actually asked 9 this month so far, 10 last month and 6 the month before. This is a lot of questions, but with the important caveat that nobody submitted any others, so in my personal opinion this amount of questions by a single member was clearly warranted. My suggestion is that either we forget about the cap, or we make regular use of the provision in 1.2.1.4.3 that allows more Terps if the minister is ok with it (meaning the Government can refuse extra Terps at its own risk), or we add a "neutral pool" of, say, 5 questions per month that anyone is allowed to draw from once their allocation is over, first-come-first-serve, which should allow for all ministers to receive (more than) a question per month.
I was also thinking about an alternate way of capping questions, by holding monthly threads of questions to ministers, with a different set of ministers up for questioning each week and every MC/Senator allowed a question to each minister during that week; but maybe this is too complicated or too much of a departure to stick.

Yes, I disagree with the cap.
But I wholeheartedly agree that other members of the Opposition need to ask questions.
Until they do, I will continue to do what I believe is a vital function of our system of government.

That's absolutely fair and I will gladly remove the provision from the bill.

I realise it sounds implausible that this was thought of months ago, so for the sake of transparency feel free to check the draft history of the bill on Google Docs, which shows that language was inserted on January 29: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14SWtkR3C21hZlmrls-WSkI7hGUYzKV2ty30RcZwcPAY/edit?usp=sharing

Luc, no need for the transparency links although I did immediately conclude the purpose was due to my terpelaziuns. And in case you are wondering about the esteem for which I have for you...I thought you wrote this up within hours...

I really do recognize that the volume is annoying but the goal has been just one terpelaziun per Cabinet portfolio per month. The Seneschal, because they are legally allowed to answer any of them, may be hit with more than one. But one question per month seems reasonable to me.

I think the addition of deputies and several other components of the update are good but do not support a cap on the number. I would suggest a limit to just one "active" terpelaziun per responsible official which with supplementary questions could extend for the entire Clark. I never considered a hard-cap even when I too was annoyed by the volume during my terms in office. It is an annoying but vitally important part of accountability.

[Sir Lüc]

I really do recognize that the volume is annoying but the goal has been just one terpelaziun per Cabinet portfolio per month. The Seneschal, because they are legally allowed to answer any of them, may be hit with more than one. But one question per month seems reasonable to me.

The current volume is honestly not annoying at all, since it amounts to a couple of questions per position per month; I think no minister should complain about having to answer a few questions.

I would suggest a limit to just one "active" terpelaziun per responsible official which with supplementary questions could extend for the entire Clark.

This was kind of my first idea, since my intention was to avoid a minister be flooded with questions to reply to, but then I thought it would be annoying if people blocked one another from questioning someone because someone else already had an open question for that minister. Maybe we could explore the possibility of monthly threads of questions to ministers as I suggested earlier, but in any case, a hard cap was a bad idea when I thought of it and an even worse one now.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I 100% support this initiative. This was something I thought was important in the past, but it got pushback (and the other mob had the majority then) so it fell off the radar.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

This was kind of my first idea, since my intention was to avoid a minister be flooded with questions to reply to, but then I thought it would be annoying if people blocked one another from questioning someone because someone else already had an open question for that minister.

I would suggest an option that best balances those concerns but am not sure which one does it. I would recommend the one-at-a-time option for an initial try.