Europeian Question Time

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my special privilege and honor to bring back Europeian Question Time.

Here's how it works:

Europeian Question Time is a panel show, with myself as the moderator. I will ask a general question to start off with, then allow the panelists to offer their thoughts and challenge/question each other. Follow-up questions, clarifications, and so on will also feature.

At some point during the discussion, I will open the questioning up to you, the citizens of Europeia.

Some rules:

1. I encourage debate and challenge, but I will ask that the participants be civil.
2. Unless it is part of the public question section, I would ask that only myself and the panelists post in this thread, please.


With all of that out of the way, let me introduce the panelists!

Associate Justice Skizzy Grey, Attorney General PhDre, World Assembly Delegate Vinage, Minister of Culture Drexlore Greyjoy, Supreme Chancellor Lethen.

Alright, thank you all for agreeing to be here.

First question: This week saw our population drop below 1200 (it is currently at 1201). For the past 3 weeks, both the population numbers and the number of telegrams sent declined (66 nations and 1413 telegrams, respectively).

What do you think is the likely explanation for the decline, and what could be done to help resolve the situation? Is there also an issue in "Citizen Integration"?
 
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Running Europeia's government is like playing "Whack-A-Mole" -- you come into office with a couple problems identified, you focus on those problems and solve them, and then you find that a couple things that the prior administration done well have fallen by the wayside and demand your attention.

In Swak's case, he came into office with a mandate to fix Vinage's perceived shortcomings in communications and diplomacy. He has certainly addressed communications. It's too soon to evaluate this administration's diplomacy, but there's certainly evidence of activity, which bodes well for results eventually. The problem, however, is that in the meantime, there's growing evidence that one of the things Vinage's administration did exceptionally well -- recruiting -- has fallen by the wayside.

I hate to throw stones, but Drecq has sent only 122 TGs in the past two weeks. That's a minimally acceptable contribution from a Cabinet minister whose primary responsibilities lie elsewhere. For a minister whose entire job is ensuring that the region has an adequate recruitment program, that sucks. I can only hope that Drecq's slow pace is due to RL issues that will quickly rectify themselves -- getting his workload up to the 300 TG/week that his predecessor averaged last term would go a long way toward addressing our declining throughput.

Drecq has also lost one of his most prolific recruiters with the departure of blairclair. He's going to need to find some way to make up for those TGs -- most likely from a relatively new citizen, as the administration is already going above the call of duty with their own recruitment efforts.

I won't rehash what I've said on Citizen Integration elsewhere on the forum. Suffice it to say CI has been a problem for a long time. Unlike Interior, it's not a deficit of effort; it's a deficit of ideas. I would urge the Swak administration to focus on fixing Interior in the short run, and work on an ideas-based solution for welcoming to roll out later in the term (by which point the Interior fix will give us a larger pool of new nations to work with).
 
I think we've lost a fair few Recruiters who were consistently racking up high numbers. Blairclair, Caligari and you might even be able to throw Vinage into that category. Couple that with the low Recruitment quotas be handed out and there's your answer. I've asked Drecq to increas the quotas a little, which he did. So let's see how this plays out.
 
In the future, please wait until the public question period has been opened.

How do our other panelists feel about the population issue?
 
Skizzy Grey's answer was a thing of beauty, and I really can't add much to what he had to say. Our Interior Minister's contributions have been abyssmal, and my hope is that things will fix themselves shortly. If not, we'll most likely see the Minister in question removed from office; whoever replaces him will not only have to recruit like a dog - as is expected - but will have to inspire others to recruit. It doesn't help, of course, that he has lost many strong recruiters, and recruiters that would also provide a nice boost - myself being a good example - to things such as Real Life.
 
Firstly, thank you Jus' for asking me to be here. My first ever Question Time or being involved in anything like this. Usually I was the moderator. But anyway my opinion on the question.

Skizzy's analogy of being President being akin to wack-a-mole isn't far off from the truth. I'd add in though that your playing it with your face as you are always at a reactionary disadvantage. You are constantly going here and there to resolve a problem you didn't expect and on top of that there are outside sources of debate and conflict. One thing though that never goes away is the need of focusing on internal matters such as Culture, Interior and Intergration - usually these issues there are the same every term.

In regards to Interior, it is appalling to see our population continue to plummet without there being any real urgency around that fact. As Skizzy has pointed out only 112 TGs have been sent out by the individual who's role it is is to recruit isn't really acceptable however I expect that to now change as this fact has been brought to light. If the current Administration though believes it is a combination of a lack of non-quota assigned people and a lack of quota assigned people pushing forward then it would need to examine the reasons why for that. During my own term we could call upon an array of people to bring in big numbers and, should there be any slack, then I myself as serving President would push forward and knock out a huge total. There's a lack of leadership from the top in matters related to Interior and, one would hope, this stops before we fall below 1,000.

As for Citizen Integration it needs to work out what it is, either a TG sending service for nations in Europeia or an actual Integration program that mentors, helps and guides people into Europeia. At the moment it is trying to do a bit of both which more focus on the TGs. The second path is the better one.
 
Apologies for being absent - we just got our internet back up earlier today. <_<

Let's move quickly to resignations - the MoCI and the CoS both have been replaced recently. How much of a concern should this be for Swak, and for the region, and is there anyone else likely to go soon? Also, is this going to be a trend?
 
Nearly every Administration has a few early horses dropping out of the race to survive come the end, it is just the nature of politics here as someone might think they have the time but upon confirmation things change. I never think it is fair to criticise someone when genuine real life reasons are given as a reason to resign and take a step back. Additionally the resignations have little correlation between them so it shouldn't be of any concern to Swakistek.

For the region though, you want to replace them with a steady hand to reassure the public that the Administration is maintaining the same standard in terms of quality since the new nominee wasn't the first choice. In Elias they certainly have that, a good ideas man there. For Intergration I am not too sure and I worry that there could be links between this Administration and Sopo's second.
 
Thanks for having me, Jus.

Let's move quickly to resignations - the MoCI and the CoS both have been replaced recently. How much of a concern should this be for Swak, and for the region, and is there anyone else likely to go soon? Also, is this going to be a trend?
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I don't see these resignations as being a concern for Swak - the biggest challenge for any President when there's a Cabinet shuffle is who to nominate. Neither of Swak's candidates are going to cost him much political capital, and I think there's a recognition among the politically active in Europeia that there aren't a whole lot of options for Swak in terms of nominations. I don't see any other Cabinet members resigning, but these two incidents were caused entirely by RL issues, which are out of the President's control. So at the same time, I can't speak as to future nominations.
 
First off thanks for having me Jus. Also, I appear to be the only Non-Former President on this panel. That's cool.

The two resignations of Alex and Apollo should not be a concern for Swak. Both were for personal, RL reasons. Alex for being really sick and Apollo for personal reasons. These are both uncontrollable events that I think will not and should not effect Swak and his administration. You only really need to worry when people start resigning because of Swak, like during the latest run of Sopo which saw three of his ministers dropping out, not because of RL reasons, but because of what they thought of Sopo and how his administration was going. I have no intention to resign this term, unless some serious RL interference happens,which I don't think will, and I don't think of the other Ministers will resign.
 
The bigger story is that someone who was taken seriously as a presidential candidate just a few weeks ago has left the region. It isn't the first time this has happened. Please people -- when someone with an unimpressive record of recent activity posts a presidential platform, don't swoon over it. Hell, don't even read it.
 
Skizzy Grey said:
The bigger story is that someone who was taken seriously as a presidential candidate just a few weeks ago has left the region. It isn't the first time this has happened. Please people -- when someone with an unimpressive record of recent activity posts a presidential platform, don't swoon over it. Hell, don't even read it.
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Was Swak any more active than me in the previous 2 months? I don't think so.
 
Jusduckria said:
In the future, please wait until the public question period has been opened.
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Let's sort of jump over from the resignations to those still around With one Senator resigning, one Senator suspended, and the legislation currently before them, what's up with the Senate?
 
Apollo said:
Was Swak any more active than me in the previous 2 months? I don't think so.
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But in the past year, or so, Swak' had only the 1 resignation/retirement post. Also I'd go along with yes, he was just doing it in a quiet Admin' way.

With one Senator resigning, one Senator suspended, and the legislation currently before them, what's up with the Senate?
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Ever since the Law Index Reforms which saw the Senate completely re-evaluate and redo every piece of legislation that we had, activity has been down. Soon after that, and just before the start of my first term, there was a movement to have the Senate heavily reformed and perhaps move to a new system. Soon after though, even when several 'Reformists' were elected to the Senate, the movement died down due to a lack of 'support'.

So to answer the question - not knowing what the Senate stands for now is what is up with it. This election, and indeed the next election, people will stand on platforms of: 'We have all the laws we need. I will not propose anything new' because ideas have run short of what to do when in the Senate. I wouldn't be surprised if reform is back as a hot topic come Senate Election day.
 
Apollo said:
Skizzy Grey said:
The bigger story is that someone who was taken seriously as a presidential candidate just a few weeks ago has left the region. It isn't the first time this has happened. Please people -- when someone with an unimpressive record of recent activity posts a presidential platform, don't swoon over it. Hell, don't even read it.
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Was Swak any more active than me in the previous 2 months? I don't think so.
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Quite a bit, actually. A good deal of it was behind the scenes.

This wasn't meant to be a jab at you, though. I just think your case demonstrates that promises of activity should be taken with a grain of salt -- because even people who make those promises in good faith may be unable to keep them, whereas people who are already highly active are a good bet to remain so.
 
Jusduckria said:
Jusduckria said:
In the future, please wait until the public question period has been opened.
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Let's sort of jump over from the resignations to those still around With one Senator resigning, one Senator suspended, and the legislation currently before them, what's up with the Senate?
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Most of the "reformers" favor activity for its own sake. I hope Europeians continue to oppose so-called reforms of this sort.

Most of the major legislation we've seen proposed the past few terms was poorly thought through, so a "do nothing" Senate is hardly the worst of all worlds. Besides, the "do nothing" label doesn't fit the current Senate -- they have acted quickly on executive appointments, for example. They may be losing a bit of steam as the term winds down, but I think the current Senate actually deserves pretty good marks.
 
To add to Skizzy's comments it is also one of the smallest Senate's we've had in a long time and, it seems, to have been a struggle for there to even be 5 active individuals there
 
Vinage said:
To add to Skizzy's comments it is also one of the smallest Senate's we've had in a long time and, it seems, to have been a struggle for there to even be 5 active individuals there
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You will invariably have one Senator who is inactive, even in a Senate of five. Combine that with having someone on LoA (more often than not, one person is gone at any given time), and you have an activity problem in a small Senate. We certainly can't sustain a huge Senate like we had a few years ago, but a 7-seat Senate might be better than the current 5-seat version. Having 2 inactive Senators out of 5 is a much bigger problem than 2 inactive Senators out of 7.

There's a sense that we shouldn't increase the size of the Senate, because we can't even maintain activity with a small Senate, but I don't agree with that line of thinking. Basically, I don't think we can do a very good job predicting in advance which Senators will be active and which won't be. For evidence, just look at general election vote tallies -- you'll see a lot of people near the top whose activity levels were disappointing, and you'll see a fair number who barely squeaked into the Senate but were highly active once they got there.
 
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