Antillan Constitutional Convention

[Dr. Cynic]

Mr. Speaker

Order! Order!

Honorable Members, the Constitutional convention of the First Antillan Parliament is now convened. The floor is open to Hon. Members who wish to speak.

David Valentine

Mr. Speaker, I propose the following:

 - That the govt. elections occur no later than 5 months after election or so long as confidence in the government may be maintained.

 - That the Speaker of the House be elected independently of the govt. by MPs.

 - The creation of a Supreme Court of Antilla is hereby created to uphold and interpret the laws of Antilla with no more than three Justices at a time.

[MOPolitico]

Mr Alexander Burke:

I have two proposals of my own:

 - The authority to organise Parliament shall be vested in a Prime Minister, who shall be elected by a majority of Parliament.
 - The Prime Minister shall have the authority to create and dissolve committees at his discretion. Each bill of legislation must be introduced and passed in the appropriate committee before being introduced in Parliament at large. The party affiliation of the members of each committee must be proportional to the party affiliation of Parliament at large. The authority to organise a committee is vested in the chairman of said committee, who shall be nominated by the Prime Minister and approved of by a majority of the committee he is appointed to chair, and who must also be a member of the committee he is appointed to chair. No man may serve as the chairman of multiple committees, and no man may serve as Prime Minister and chairman of a committee.   

[Insula Dei]

OOC: Uhm, I was under the impression that the game sort of tacitly assumed that the nation had been going steadily for some amount of time already. Wouldn't that sort of make an IC Constitutional Convention self-defeating?

[MOPolitico]

OOC: Uhm, I was under the impression that the game sort of tacitly assumed that the nation had been going steadily for some amount of time already. Wouldn't that sort of make an IC Constitutional Convention self-defeating?

Well, we could pretend the constitution that results from this convention is the one we've been using for hundreds of years, couldn't we?

[Insula Dei]

OOC: Uhm, I was under the impression that the game sort of tacitly assumed that the nation had been going steadily for some amount of time already. Wouldn't that sort of make an IC Constitutional Convention self-defeating?

Well, we could pretend the constitution that results from this convention is the one we've been using for hundreds of years, couldn't we?

That's a way around that, yes.

[bullmoose88]

Ooc: wouldn't you all much rather have me, out of convention, appoint the leader of the majority party or coalition or person most likely to have a working govt to form a govt in the kings name? Otherwise your pm is like a speaker. Which is sort of true but sort of isn't.

[ChairmanSanchez]

Ooc: wouldn't you all much rather have me, out of convention, appoint the leader of the majority party or coalition or person most likely to have a working govt to form a govt in the kings name? Otherwise your pm is like a speaker. Which is sort of true but sort of isn't.

OOC: I rather see Party leaders take office. By the way, I listed myself as a member of the National Patriot Party, a small imitation of the UKIP, so if anyone else wants to join, we can be a small block or coaltion partner.

[Insula Dei]

Ooc: wouldn't you all much rather have me, out of convention, appoint the leader of the majority party or coalition or person most likely to have a working govt to form a govt in the kings name? Otherwise your pm is like a speaker. Which is sort of true but sort of isn't.

I'm with Bullmoose on that one.

[Senator Barnes]

Ooc: wouldn't you all much rather have me, out of convention, appoint the leader of the majority party or coalition or person most likely to have a working govt to form a govt in the kings name? Otherwise your pm is like a speaker. Which is sort of true but sort of isn't.

Ooc: That'd be fine with me.  I just think we should establish some kind of party standings in Parliament, first.

[bullmoose88]

Ooc: that and some caretaker govt. Who wants to show up at the palace and convince me they can hold a govt for more than a few rl hours?

[lilTommy]

I took at stab at standings in the Revival section, but added National Patriot now:

•SocialDemocrats (35.3%): 177
•Liberal (21.3%): 107
•Cooperative (20.0%): 100
•Nationalist(Pf) (10.0%): 50
•PopularMovement (7.3%): 36
•NationalPatriot (6.1%): 30

[Sibboleth]

Some random numbers for our parliament... let's say a parliament of 150 seats. This isn't a big country, after all. As for parties... I think we have to have an unclear election result, right? At least to start with. So...

Social Democrats - 54
Popular Movement Party* - 31
Liberal Party** - 23
Pitfarris Nationalist Party - 22
Cooperative Party - 14
Independents - 4
National Patriot Party - 2

Which gives us a parliament without a natural majority and with significant representation for a very wide range of interests.

*I'm assuming that this is Conservative or Christian Democratic in some way.
**I'm assuming that these guys will be fairly right-wing as well.

[Insula Dei]

ooc:Current party standings in terms of active members:

SDP : 4
PNP: 3
Liberal: 1
PMP: 1
National Patriot: 1
Co-op: 1

I do suppose that folding the Liberal, PMP and NP parties into one centrist to centre-rightwing party wouldn't be too bad an idea (?) And the Pitfarrian nationalist cause is very well represented right now.

So in terms of the government, I think we're currently seeing the last months of a SDP-Co-op government, with elections imminent.

[Senator Barnes]

Some random numbers for our parliament... let's say a parliament of 150 seats. This isn't a big country, after all. As for parties... I think we have to have an unclear election result, right? At least to start with. So...

Social Democrats - 54
Popular Movement Party* - 31
Liberal Party** - 23
Pitfarris Nationalist Party - 22
Cooperative Party - 14
Independents - 4
National Patriot Party - 2

Which gives us a parliament without a natural majority and with significant representation for a very wide range of interests.

*I'm assuming that this is Conservative or Christian Democratic in some way.
**I'm assuming that these guys will be fairly right-wing as well.

I'm quite interested in this.

[Insula Dei]

Some random numbers for our parliament... let's say a parliament of 150 seats. This isn't a big country, after all. As for parties... I think we have to have an unclear election result, right? At least to start with. So...

Social Democrats - 54
Popular Movement Party* - 31
Liberal Party** - 23
Pitfarris Nationalist Party - 22
Cooperative Party - 14
Independents - 4
National Patriot Party - 2

Which gives us a parliament without a natural majority and with significant representation for a very wide range of interests.

*I'm assuming that this is Conservative or Christian Democratic in some way.
**I'm assuming that these guys will be fairly right-wing as well.

I agree with you on the order of magnitude you give all the parties right now. This does look a lot like Sweden now, doesn't it?

[lilTommy]

Works for me... this is after all a mildly scandinavian country

[Senator Barnes]

Also, as far as voting on bills go, I think the fairest way to do it would have the RL players to decided internally how their party would vote on a said bill and then inform the Speaker, GM, whoever, who would tally them all up.

[MOPolitico]

ooc:Current party standings in terms of active members:

SDP : 4
PNP: 3
Liberal: 1
PMP: 1
National Patriot: 1
Co-op: 1

I do suppose that folding the Liberal, PMP and NP parties into one centrist to centre-rightwing party wouldn't be too bad an idea (?) And the Pitfarrian nationalist cause is very well represented right now.

So in terms of the government, I think we're currently seeing the last months of a SDP-Co-op government, with elections imminent.

I would be absolutely opposed to merging the LP, NP, and PMP, for what it's worth.

[ChairmanSanchez]

ooc:Current party standings in terms of active members:

SDP : 4
PNP: 3
Liberal: 1
PMP: 1
National Patriot: 1
Co-op: 1

I do suppose that folding the Liberal, PMP and NP parties into one centrist to centre-rightwing party wouldn't be too bad an idea (?) And the Pitfarrian nationalist cause is very well represented right now.

So in terms of the government, I think we're currently seeing the last months of a SDP-Co-op government, with elections imminent.

I would be absolutely opposed to merging the LP, NP, and PMP, for what it's worth.

I rather see lose coalitions, then 3 main parties.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

ooc:Current party standings in terms of active members:

SDP : 4
PNP: 3
Liberal: 1
PMP: 1
National Patriot: 1
Co-op: 1

I do suppose that folding the Liberal, PMP and NP parties into one centrist to centre-rightwing party wouldn't be too bad an idea (?) And the Pitfarrian nationalist cause is very well represented right now.

So in terms of the government, I think we're currently seeing the last months of a SDP-Co-op government, with elections imminent.

I would be absolutely opposed to merging the LP, NP, and PMP, for what it's worth.

I rather see lose coalitions, then 3 main parties.

This. It would be more interesting to have parties with similar, yet not identical goals be forced to work together to form a majority. Two-party or even three-party systems are boring.

[MOPolitico]

ooc:Current party standings in terms of active members:

SDP : 4
PNP: 3
Liberal: 1
PMP: 1
National Patriot: 1
Co-op: 1

I do suppose that folding the Liberal, PMP and NP parties into one centrist to centre-rightwing party wouldn't be too bad an idea (?) And the Pitfarrian nationalist cause is very well represented right now.

So in terms of the government, I think we're currently seeing the last months of a SDP-Co-op government, with elections imminent.

I would be absolutely opposed to merging the LP, NP, and PMP, for what it's worth.

I rather see lose coalitions, then 3 main parties.

This. It would be more interesting to have parties with similar, yet not identical goals be forced to work together to form a majority. Two-party or even three-party systems are boring.

I don't oppose coalitions, I just oppose a coalition with those two particular parties.

[lilTommy]

Social Democrats - 54
Popular Movement Party* - 31
Liberal Party** - 23 ***
Pitfarris Nationalist Party - 22
Cooperative Party - 14
Independents - 4
National Patriot Party - 2

Which gives us a parliament without a natural majority and with significant representation for a very wide range of interests.

*I'm assuming that this is Conservative or Christian Democratic in some way.
**I'm assuming that these guys will be fairly right-wing as well.


So we have our groupings?
*** i would assume since these guys would be more like German Free Democrats? who can speak to the Liberals?

[Swedish Cheese]

The easiest way would be to first determine what sort of election system the country has before figuring out how many seats every party has.

I'm guessing it's some sort of PR, either STV or D'Hondt

Then as the region's hopefully start to shape up, based on their demographics and political profile calculate what the popular vote in each region was at the last election, add the regions together to get a national result, and from that calculate the number of seats for each party. It sounds complicated, but based on my own experience that's the way to get the most accurate results, and it will make things easier for calculating future election results.

 

[Swedish Cheese]

Also am I the only one who think the Prime Minister should instead be called Hand of the King?

[ilikeverin]

Also am I the only one who think the Prime Minister should instead be called Hand of the King?