Drecq said:
HEM said:
Drecq said:
The actual activity isnt something the Senate can regulate. What our purview is is the legislation. The law will still allow for it. Your beef is with the executive not with us. So yes, it still seems like you didnt read the proposed legislation. Either that or you dont know the difference in purpose between the different branches of government. Further, this doesnt de-institutionalize the GAP it simply redistributes the relevant passages in order to assign them to relevant legislation with a larger overreaching purpose. What you are arguing is akin to saying the legislative would work better if you would take the legislative section of the Constitution and make it its own separate act.
You are gutting the GAP and distributing it every which way. This will only cause it to lose more focus and purpose than it already has with the dissolution of the Ministry of Foreign Cultivation. Furthermore, the Council represented the "endgame" or "success stage" of the GAP, and the sweeping away of this provision essentially says that any grand vision that was associated with the GAP is gone, replaced with some piecemeal organization that will be on a lesser level than the ambassador corp.
Yes, my primary beef is with the executive. But what the Senate is doing has no practical purpose aside from taking the GAP backwards. There is no benefit of your approach, as Senator Anumia has pointed out, aside from our region's seemingly obsessive desire to have as few pieces of legislation as possible
You are assuming that the GAP is identical with the Foreign Cultivation Act. It isnt. The Foreign Cultivation Act makes the GAP possible but they arent identical. We arent gutting the GAP. If you want it to have its own Ministry again go talk with the President. Even after the change that would remain possible. You want more Partnership Agreements go find some regions and sing them. Even after the change that will remain possible. You want a grand unifying vision talk to the executive. You want focus and purpose talk to the candidates for President and push for a reinstated MoFC with you as Minister. Then do something. Dont expect the Senate to keep pointless legislation simply because it makes you feel better. Or if you want pointless feel good legislation let us repeal this and get something more effective in there like the "Puppies and Kittens Act (2014)". As to the Council, it was an endgame that was never likely to happen and with the downgrading of the GAP from a central column of our foreign policy to just another tool on our belt it has become far less likely. If ever it does become a possibility we can reinstate it then. But I wouldnt hold my breath. Not to mention that the legislation for the Council is pointless even then as the executive doesnt need authorizing legislation for internal restructuring, which is what the Council would be.
What is incredibly frustrating about your response is that you are pretending that you are making a "legislative" decision, for the sake of "legislative efficiency" with no political considerations attached. In reality, your support of this legislative measure is influenced -- at least in part -- by your clear disdain for the GAP. Furthermore, you try to pretend that this legislation action makes no substantive changes to the GAP, and then clearly acknowledge that it reflects a "downgrading" of the GAP. A downgrading that the Senate is now apart of. The Senate is helping set policy on the importance of the GAP, and any insistence to the contrary is just...contrary to evidence.
I have no problem with you opposing a focus on the GAP. But I do have a little problem with you pretending this action is independent from policy and basically anybody who believes the contrary is some big dummy who hasn't "read the bill". This move is a policy action reflecting what the Senate believes the future role of the GAP in the region. The Senate is not acting on any public instructions from the Executive, the Senate is -- and I simply cannot emphasize this enough --
helping set policy.
I disagree with the policy, and so I am saying so.`
I understand that the Senate is not -- in law -- fully shuttering the GAP. But this action removes it from prominence, and actually
closes doors in terms of the tools and options open to political policymakers in the region.