A Joint Statement on 55RZ21

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I'd suggest dampening down on the apocalyptic stuff. There were eleven active Talossans in 1991. We don't want to give encouragement to the demagogues who yell stuff like "if you don't enact MY programme in full right now IT'S ALL OVER FOR TALOSSA!!!" I should also point out that it's Northern Hemisphere summer and people are at the beach.

The argument for a Cosa which requires more than your own vote to enter must be one about the ability of voters to hold politicians accountable - not one of activity. We had a Real Cosa 1997-2003 and I don't think it changed much activity-wise.

[Glüc]

Not opposed to reducing the size of the Cosa, but I will say that if having more parties is preventing coalitions from deciding on major constitutional reform in a backroom deal rather than through debate in the Ziu I can only see that as a good thing.

At the very least more parties also means more MCs who are thinking for themselves rather than just go along blindly with whatever the party leader says.

[Glüc]

The TNC and NPW voting against their pledge was quite surprising. I can imagine quite frustrating for someone on the other side of the debate, though I suppose many monarchist LCC voters were equally upset last term when the LCC decided to support the bill (which was decidedly not-conservative and not-monarchist) in the first place.

Not sure what to think of the abstain vote now. Although its true it was said each MC would get a free vote, the list of MCs during the election used to include Danihel Txechescu and the campaign, the promise to come up with an alternative and the word "Conservative" in the party name will surely have led many voters to believe that the party wouldnt be voting for a bill that basically left no part of the Talossan monarchy remaining, other than the name. Then again, I wasn't an LCC voter this time around, so maybe I'm wrong. Instead next election I'll have to explain to KLüP voters why we failed in convincing Lüc to become King. Our highly ideological and devoted base might not take that all too well.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Not sure what to think of the abstain vote now. Although its true it was said each MC would get a free vote, the list of MCs during the election used to include Danihel Txechescu and the campaign, the promise to come up with an alternative and the word "Conservative" in the party name will surely have led many voters to believe that the party wouldnt be voting for a bill that basically left no part of the Talossan monarchy remaining, other than the name.

I think you answered your own question. I'm not privy to internal Beaver debates, but the decision of the party majority on the constitutional issue (and maybe even on sitting in government with the hateful FreeDems?) is probably why s:reu Txechescu is not an MC. And the large vote for Balançéu and Dien (together doubling the LCC performance) surely shows where the single-issue GOD SAVE THE KING voters went and why they're unlikely to feel betrayed by the LCC keeping scrupulously to their election commitments.

Anyway, elections should have consequences. There was a certain Baron who complained, a few Cosas back, that for 9 out of the last 10 Cosas (or some number like that) the same parties had been in government. This is going to happen in a society which is very deeply divided (almost 50-50) over a basic constitutional issue, and where a party can only fall out of the legislature if its own members unanimously give up on it. So: let's make every party which wants Cosa seats work for it.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

At the very least more parties also means more MCs who are thinking for themselves rather than just go along blindly with whatever the party leader says.

You say "thinking for themselves", I say "going rogue on their commitments and what they were elected for".

The argument that individuals breaking with their previous commitments and collective decisions is a good thing, to be applauded, is an essentially conservative one because it insinuates that collective action - of the type needed to make changes in a democracy - is a bad thing. I don't expect for a moment that Dixhet Fira, to pick a name at random, will suddenly become a Republican. It would be insulting to even consider it, IMHO. Party cohesion is necessary for things to change in a democracy, and to smear party cohesion as being "not thinking for yourself" is an argument which betrays an inherent conservatism.

[Glüc]

I suppose that was more a general remark than directed at the TNC/NPW votes per se. To clarify: I don't thinking breaking election promises is a good thing, even though in this particular case, I'm glad about the result.

But MC's voting for bad laws on a partisan basis without bothering with the details has gone beyond just fulfilling manifesto planks. And even when there is a consensus about the general direction in which things should move, it could still be valuable for MCs to think about whether they are happy with the details, and often this doesnt seem to happen.

Also, collective action can happen as a result of discussion in the Ziu. It doesnt need to be done as a deal beforehand, especially when its not that strongly related to the functioning of the government.

[Glüc]

As for the progressivism/conservatism debate, Talossa needs both.

Without change, Talossa becomes stale and politics doesnt matter because nothing ever changes so why bother. Too much change, and everything becomes meaningless because everything we build can be chucked away just as easily. What purpose is there to anything we do if next year we're going to do everything differently again?

In the RUMP days, we clearly had too little change. The rules for orglaw amendments were actually stricter than they are now. Every idea was immediately shot down by fortress senate and ther words "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" were uttered almost daily.

The past few years however, weve changed forum, pretty much every institution has seen some major reform, we've adopted an entire new constitution, and the hereditary monarchy has been abolished. This hasn't led to any major surge in activity. We've also come dangerously close to passing a deadly bill that would remove people from the rolls for not filling in the census. For citizens who are still around but not that active anymore its difficult to keep up, which I fear means many who fall behind are probably lost forever.

Not saying we should stop reforming stuff altogether and I certainly don't blame anyone for arguing for any further changes, including abolishing the monarchy, if that is what they feel is right, but fears about Talossa being hyperconservative and nothing ever changing are wildly overblown, as the amount of constitutional changes we've had in the last few years clearly shows.

I used to be clearly on the progressive side of things around here, now I'm somewhat on the conservative side. Maybe that's because I have changed, but there's no denying Talossa has too.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

The past few years however, weve changed forum, pretty much every institution has seen some major reform, we've adopted an entire new constitution, and the hereditary monarchy has been abolished. This hasn't led to any major surge in activity.

All those things you mention are activity, surely? Or do you have a different definition of "activity" in mind? I was just telling one of my Cabinet colleagues that political reforms have to be justified or criticised on their own terms, not because they will increase or decrease extra-political activity.

For citizens who are still around but not that active anymore its difficult to keep up, which I fear means many who fall behind are probably lost forever.

Which is why we instituted La C'hronica, to fill in less active citizens, in the absence of a private-enterprise press. Have you got any constructive suggestions how inactive citizens could be helped to "keep up", without - say - returning to total stasis? I should also mention that centre-Left governments enacted the National Surveys, the only serious effort heretofore to actually ask inactive citizens what they wanted.

See, what I'm frustrated with here is an overwhelming negativity from the centre-Right of Talossan politics. What the centre-Left majority doing sucks, clearly, in their eyes; but the Cosa opposition don't seem interested in holding the Government to account via Terps or via Cosa debates, or via building an alternative government. (The best compliment that can be given to the LCC is that, when they were the second-largest party, Ián P. could have theoretically formed a government and at least tried to get Peculiarist support.) Right now, the only effective opposition comes from "the Hand of the King" making extra-parliamentary speeches. This is the kind of politics which doesn't even try to defeat the Government - instead, its best hope is that the majority will decide that the minority was right all along.

I mean, my answer to what to do if the Government is running out of steam but the Opposition don't even try to use the political institutions to hold them to account / defeat them because "what's the point" is that the political institutions are busted and need to be scrapped. But that's precisely what the Opposition want least of all. If the Government aren't as active as they should be, but the Opposition aren't even trying to create a political alternative, then that is a situation guaranteed to form a spiral of dwindling activity. And let me re-iterate - the centre-Left got in its current position after long and hard struggle against a majority conservative party (the FreeDems have never had an absolute majority), so defeating and replacing an incumbent Government is possible under our present Constitution, with hard work and strategy. But the centre-Right has shown no appetite to do so since the RUMP said "what's the point" and dissolved.

I think a form of opposition which is based around stopping the Government enacting its programme, around complaining about Government failures, around a sterile insistence that it is the obligation of the Government to throw out its own programme and let its sworn enemies tell it what to do - rather than actively trying to replace the Government and enacting an alternative programme - will by design lead to a depressing effect on activity. Don't you agree?

[Françal I. Lux]

Just to be clear I don't mean to be a hysteric on this issue, and I certainly don't have the experience as many of you do, but I think we all know what I mean when I say our institutions are in decline and in need of substantial repair. I don't think it's the number of "active" people (or lack of it) that's hindering us from this. It's people who are active but only at a bare minimum and unable to carry out the duties they took on to begin with. It's a slow drip drip drip of many things happening all at once and if we all can't get serious together as a community here, things will only get worse.

I'll just go back to my original point: we need REFORMS—real REFORMS. Preferable negotiated and passed in GOOD FAITH.