McEntire
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Opinion: Kazaman Must Go as DEIA
By McEntire
Late last week, the Court ruled that the DEIA violated the Information Act and the Charter of Rights when he ordered administrators to edit my post. It is not a minor thing that the Court ruled that the government violated a citizen's constitutional rights, in fact I cannot recall any other such incident in Europeian history. This, combined with the MadJack incident in which "Europeia apologise[d] to TRR for mishandling TRR's sensitive information," lead me to one conclusion: Kazaman must go as DEIA.
The Europeian Intelligence Agency as an institution is given a long leash to operate. The Director has power over classification and declassification, and has an unusually long term length of 180 days to minimize turnover in the office. Given that the Director is given so much latitude over classified information, we place a lot of trust in them. It's not enough to blame a constitutional rights violation on a simple "misread of the law" and move on. We trust the DEIA not to misread the law, and actions have consequences.
Similarly, we trust the DEIA to advise the President on the proper handling of sensitive information. While we owned up to the fact that we mishandled information from our ally TRR, there have not been meaningful consequences for this major snafu. And while Kazaman did sign on to our apology statement to TRR, there has not been acknowledgment or apology directly from the DEIA on either of these major mistakes.
Instead, the government troublingly argued in the judicial review that the portion of the Information Act tasking the DEIA with "the maintenance of the security of the Republic" provided an unlimited pass to take any action towards that goal. Thankfully the Court rejected this claim, recognizing that years of different Senates have debated how much power to give the DEIA and it is certainly not unlimited. But now, President JayDee has attempted to unilaterally give the government the power to suppress citizens' posts without due process of law. We'll see how that fares in the courts.
It was prudent and proper of the courts to reject this baseless assertion of unlimited executive power, but I was surprised that it was asserted in the first place. We have yet to see any contrition or accountability from the DEIA, instead we have only seen doubling down in legal filings and attempting to retcon the situation through executive order.
It is fair to say that the DEIA is a difficult office to fill, with only two occupants in recent memory: Kazaman and former Director NES. NES famously served for over a decade, and operated with a wide berth from Presidents and Senates who valued his wisdom and connections. In fact, there was a time when the EIA was NES and NES was the EIA.
Those days are over, and Kazaman's two-year stint as DEIA is long enough. In a post-NES EIA, we ought to be able to replace the DEIA semi-regularly as we would with any other government institution. This kind of changeover is something we need to be comfortable with as a region, and the remaining two months in the term should be enough for Kazaman to train another member of EIA staff as a successor.
Finally, I want to be clear: this opinion does not come from either personal animus or a sense of revenge. I am not denigrating Kazaman's contributions to our region or foreign affairs prowess. He has been an invaluable resource to many Presidents, and worked hard to bring the TRR situation to a mutually agreeable close last term. I think he should remain as an important voice in foreign affairs, and I respect his contributions.
But as DEIA, we have now seen two high-profile mistakes in the last few months, both acknowledged by the government. The court recognized one mistake, and a joint statement put out by our own government recognized another. While I believe that immediate removal of the DEIA would cause a leadership vacuum that could jeopardize regional security, these mistakes should still have consequences.
Kazaman should serve out the rest of this term and then hand off the reins. If we take our constitutional rights and respect for our alliances seriously, we cannot consider these mistakes by the DEIA as business as usual.