Entire Senate to be Recalled?
Petition to recall all 5 sitting Senators gathers enough signatures, Senator CSP resigns
Written by Klatonia
Early Friday morning (UTC), @Monkey launched a petition to remove all 5 Senators, namely Common-Sense Politics, Forilian, Gravandius, Malashaan, and Sanjurika, from office. This process, known as a recall, is framed by article LA10. (2) of Constitution VI (2019), which states that "it shall be lawful for the People to reserve for referendum the question of the recall of one or more elected Senators, or the dissolution of the Senate and requirement that a new Senate be elected, by presenting a petition with the support of a number of citizens of Europeia numbering no less than a fifth the number of votes in the last Presidential election rounded down to the nearest integer."
In their petition, Monkey affirmed that despite the Grand Hall discussion that was started earlier this week on the topic, "Senators should be compelled to step forward and justify their inactivity from the Senate and in the region," further adding that they were "starting this petition as a way for citizens to demand accountability from the senate."
The sponsor clarified that this petition and subsequent referenda were means to force Senators to account for their inactivity, rather than hardline measures to recall the legislators: "I would also like to take the time to remind everyone that signing this petition does not necessarily indicate your approval for automatic removal of our senators, but rather that you support an effort to hold our senate accountable and ask them to justify the recent lack of activity." In a little over 10 hours, the petition garnered the minimum of 12 signatures to trigger a referendum for each Senator, totalling 5 referenda. The list of signatories can be found in this post.
Vice-Chancellor @Drecq then opened five debates, one for each Senator. They will be open until at least Monday, May 3 at 14:00 UTC and can be found in the Public Referenda subforum.
Shortly after the Vice-Chancellor launched the debates, Senator @Common-Sense Politics resigned his position in the Senate, stating that he intends "to transition [their] priorities to matters of Executive government in the coming months and offer [the Speaker their] resignation, effective at the completion of the presidential election."
This takes place as the presidential election is set to take place today and tomorrow, and will be hotly contested between Istillian, Kazaman and Lime in a race that is any ticket's game, according to A Real Newspaper's latest poll.
