Presidential Parliamentarian (Discussion Open)

[MasterJedi]

Nay

[Purple State]

I'm leery of the mention of the President without establishing anything else about the position. Either remove references to the Presidency from the section or establish what the Presidency would entail first.

Nay, but open to the idea

The nature of the development process makes that a little hard. We don't want to simply establish the whole thing in one shot, so it's necessary to work through the things one at a time. When we get to the article of the presidency that will be when we establish that. I am open to your suggestions regarding that article.

[Verily]

I'm leery of the mention of the President without establishing anything else about the position. Either remove references to the Presidency from the section or establish what the Presidency would entail first.

Nay, but open to the idea

The nature of the development process makes that a little hard. We don't want to simply establish the whole thing in one shot, so it's necessary to work through the things one at a time. When we get to the article of the presidency that will be when we establish that. I am open to your suggestions regarding that article.

True; I'm just looking for a brief statement regarding what the President is before he gets mentioned elsewhere, not a full Article describing the position.

Also, it's bad form to mention a position in the Constitution before it is established in the Constitution, although not doing so would probably be tough.

[Purple State]

I'm leery of the mention of the President without establishing anything else about the position. Either remove references to the Presidency from the section or establish what the Presidency would entail first.

Nay, but open to the idea

The nature of the development process makes that a little hard. We don't want to simply establish the whole thing in one shot, so it's necessary to work through the things one at a time. When we get to the article of the presidency that will be when we establish that. I am open to your suggestions regarding that article.

True; I'm just looking for a brief statement regarding what the President is before he gets mentioned elsewhere, not a full Article describing the position.

Also, it's bad form to mention a position in the Constitution before it is established in the Constitution, although not doing so would probably be tough.

Right now it seems the Pres would be a nationally elected figure that has the power to dissolve Parliament, have a legislative slot, and have the power to sign/veto legislation. Any other ideas?

[Purple State]

Current Tally
Aye = 8
Nay = 2

Quorum: Achieved
Time remaining: ~22 hours

[dead0man]

Aye

[afleitch]

Aye

[Purple State]

Final Tally
Aye = 10
Nay = 2

Quorum: Achieved
Motion PASSES


Thank you to all those who voted. If anyone would like to propose amendments to Article I please do so. Otherwise I hope to bring up revised versions of Articles II and III for discussion later today.

[Devilman88]

Er... what? That completely changes the scope of this proposal.

Wow, I posted that in the wrong thread. Sorry.

[Purple State]

Bump. Can delegates (or anyone really) provide ideas for Article 2 (the PM) and Article 3 (the Judiciary)?

[Lief]

Article 2 would be the President, as I think you meant. I don't really have time to write anything until my exams are finished (on the 10th), but after that I can contribute again.

[Fmr. Emperor PiT]

     I think I'll go ahead & get started on an article for the PM.

     EDIT: On second thought, I should leave that up to people who know something about a parliamentary system.

[Purple State]

     I think I'll go ahead & get started on an article for the PM.

     EDIT: On second thought, I should leave that up to people who know something about a parliamentary system.

I would say your input is just as valuable as anyone else's. If you do not want to craft an entire Article, give ideas regarding a PM or President Article based on the proposal outline and first article. I don't mind doing most of the Article wording and crafting, but I need input and ideas. Eventually these proposals begin to blend together for me and I forget what the goal of each one is.

[Fmr. Emperor PiT]

     Well I was thinking that since the Prime Minister would be elected in much the same fashion as the PPT is now, maybe the President would preside over the election of the PM. It just seems like a possible issue to me that there is no clear official to preside over such elections.

[ilikeverin]

What were the proposed powers of the President in this proposal again, anyway?

[Lief]

I think that the plan we had devised was that the Prime Minister would be in charge of the legislature, leading legislative initiatives, picking cabinet members (who would function something like American committee chairs), and setting the national policy. The President, on the other hand, would be more of a popular representative of the people, in charge of kind of checking the parliament, given the ability to veto, some legislative abilities (either introducing his own bills in a special legislative slot or putting certain bills up to national referenda), and given some ability over dismissing prime ministers and dissolving parliaments.

-----------

I also think that the Prime Minister was covered in Article I, and that Article II should focus solely on the President.

[Purple State]

Want to write it up?

[President Marokai]

This proposal has been dead for about a month and a half basically, and I've been doing something thinking.

Activity in Atlasia has taken a jump, even though of course some of the activity is from The 25's, I think that an entirely new government has lost considerable support amongst the people and this convention's activity, including mine here, has dropped to a record low. As such, I think we need to re-think our approach. We still have considerable problems in Atlasia and the best way to fix them IS through this convention, but let's take our current system as our model and make some improvements here and there.

• Take our current Constitution and combine it with all the passed Amendments so it's alot cleaner and more organized, and make some changes where necessary to deal with Regional Powers and other small areas, etc.
• Reduce the number of regions to three, the simplest way could be to divide the Midwest and the Mideast between the Pacific, Southeast, and Northeast regions. This still keeps the mode of some of the current regions but improves the system a bit.
• Expand the size of the Senate to 15, perhaps having two elected by each of the three new expanded (and consequently more active) regions, and the remaining six elected at-large.
• Deal with issues revolving around the GM, such as putting the position in the Constitution or putting it's responsibilities into a new job reminiscent of my "Department of Economic Affairs" or something.
• Fix other misc. problems such as Absentee voting, Presidential powers, or anything else we need to deal with.

We can do all of this within the framework of our current constitution without the need to build and entirely new government. So, if Lief is willing to hear me out, and PS is willing to possibly scrap and rebuild this proposal like we did with Presidential Universalism, I think we can fix Atlasia without building an entirely new house and get something we can all agree with.

[Fmr. Emperor PiT]

• Expand the size of the Senate to 15, perhaps having two elected by each of the three new expanded (and consequently more active) regions, and the remaining six elected at-large.

     Do you mean having three elected by each region?

[President Marokai]

• Expand the size of the Senate to 15, perhaps having two elected by each of the three new expanded (and consequently more active) regions, and the remaining six elected at-large.

     Do you mean having three elected by each region?

Oh, sorry, I didn't catch that. I did mean three, but it could be two and we could elect 9 at large I suppose.

[ilikeverin]

Argh, now someone is introducing the status quo as an option?

Well, congrats, you win the convention.

[President Marokai]

Argh, now someone is introducing the status quo as an option?

Well, congrats, you win the convention.

I'm afraid anything radically new is going to fail pretty badly. There's just not an appetite for it anymore. We can still fix many things and shrink regional government within the current framework and polish things up a bit.

[Fmr. Emperor PiT]

• Expand the size of the Senate to 15, perhaps having two elected by each of the three new expanded (and consequently more active) regions, and the remaining six elected at-large.

     Do you mean having three elected by each region?

Oh, sorry, I didn't catch that. I did mean three, but it could be two and we could elect 9 at large I suppose.

     I would not mind three by each region.

[ilikeverin]

I'm fairly surprised there's any lobbying for more Senate seats to be elected by regions considering the number of candidates who ran for Senate this time around.  In fact, if we're keeping the Regions, the number of Senate seats should be decreased, not increased.  Or perhaps put a cap on the number of people who can hold regional office.  Overall, we seem to have a shortage of people who want to run for anything.

[President Marokai]

I'm fairly surprised there's any lobbying for more Senate seats to be elected by regions considering the number of candidates who ran for Senate this time around.  In fact, if we're keeping the Regions, the number of Senate seats should be decreased, not increased.  Or perhaps put a cap on the number of people who can hold regional office.  Overall, we seem to have a shortage of people who want to run for anything.

Decreased? We have a record number of citizens and more voters now than we have previously. Perhaps we have uncompetitive elections in some regions but we have a ton of people participating now in comparison to a year ago. If we allowed people to perhaps serve in a regional role and a federal role, we could solve the problem.

I think we could sustain more seats, there are enough people out there who want in the process to fill them, and if they don't get the opportunity, they'll probably just leave.