Failings of Sol Part 2: Hekter's Power Plays
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by Jeff Hamilton
Hello again, people of Sol.
I come to you with another section of the tug of war between Hekter, self-appointed Vice-Chairman of Sol, and Albert Neurath, duly elected Chairman of the alliance.
The impeachment vote against Albert Neurath FAILED, 4-2 with two absences, but Hekter's power plays continue. Hekter was noted in the last issue as having changed the password on the Sol HQ, the official organization of the alliance that contains over 200 GOLD. He claims to have done this in order to avoid any shenanigans with the money during the impeachment. Well, the impeachment is over, and guess what? The Chairman STILL does not have access to the Sol HQ! What's worse, neither does the OTHER Vizier, the eminent Nagyzee, or else he would have returned it to the Chairman! Hekter claims to be fighting for "the alliance." How on eEarth is withholding the password to a lot of money to the RIGHTFUL controller good for the alliance? The short answer is, it's not.
Hekter, however, has ramped up his efforts against the Chairman in another insidious way. He claims to be fighting to "defend the Charter", yet he is trying to make Sol more bureaucratic than it notoriously is already! I shall explain.
Albert Neurath recently issued a series of Six Executive Orders for the alliance. None of them are especially controversial in their own right, and one of them (which you will see later), actually solves the reason for the impeachment vote in the first place! Hekter will claim that the Chairman is trampling on the Charter, yet there is NO CLAUSE PROHIBITING the issuing of Executive Orders.
Just to prove to you how innocuous the Orders are, I shall post the full text of all of them:
In the absence of an official amendment to the Charter regarding this, and due to clarification problems in the past, I am issuing an Executive Order on the following:
All Resolution votes, whether a Standard Resolution or a Supermajority Resolution, now require a quorum of votes to be reached for the resolution to be considered valid as well as the % of YES votes. What this would mean is:
Assume you have Resolution O0012, a Standard Resolution. Three nations vote, with two voting "yes", and one voting "no". Even though you have a 66% Yes rate, you do not have a quorum of votes.
A quorum is defined as AT LEAST 50% of all potential nations voting. If a nation formally abstains, meaning they type "I abstain", then that is counted towards the quorum. However, if a nation does not express ANY opinion, then they are not counted towards the quorum, and instead are marked Absent. Legislation depends on the % of YES votes once a quorum is reached on the matter.
As an Executive Decision, this can be changed by whomever the next Chairman will be, or once the Council adopts a resolution on the matter. However, I think all parties will agree that this decision to adopt a quorum requirement is long overdue.
Order 0002:
All SolDiers members will refrain from becoming members of non-Sol nations' Airborne Units. Existing members of other nations' Airbornes joining the SolDiers will be grandfathered in if they held their Airborne membership prior to this date. A SolDier can apply for Airborne Membership after the date of this Order in a foreign nation only with the consent of his or her commanding officer.
Order 0003:
Cabinet Appointees shall have to have been Sol Citizens for at least two months prior to their cabinet appointment except in special circumstances, to be defined as a time of war or PTO.
Order 0004:
All Cabinet Nominees shall retain their positions until their resignation from the post unless removed by a standard decision of the Security Council. Should a Chairman express a desire to appoint a new nominee to the position, the Security Council's vote on the matter are grounds for removal of the prior officeholder.
Order 0005:
Should a budget Resolution be passed, a nation may request a waiver from their monthly contribution upon providing sufficient evidence of hardship, or in times of invasion. Such a request will be made as an Emergency Resolution by the Chairman.
Order 0006:
Because of the nature of an Emergency Resolution, Emergency Resolutions should have no quorum requirement. An Emergency resolution, by its very name, should be used only in Emergency situations such as an invasion, during which quorums are made much harder to reach. Sol cannot afford to be crippled by a lack of people voting in a time of crisis.
None of those are dictatorial, and are the sort of things any President of a nation would be able to do. Number One in fact is something that Sol has asked for for some time. I ask you, how would the interests of each nation of the Sol alliance be better served if the Reps dragged their feet voting on measures that are so bloody innocuous! The short answer is that they wouldn't!
The other thing that Hekter fails either to realize or mention is that the next Chairman can just as easily remove these Orders if he chooses to. Sol right now is faced with two roads. The road of prosperity, and the road of bureaucracy. If Sol should choose to go down the wrong road, then we might need to rethink the existence of the alliance.
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And I am consistently rethinking why I am bothering with membership, since it obviously cannot stick by its own principles, despite my attempts to remind it of its own governing charter.
I talked to Nagyzee earlier today about the Sol HQ org issue, and we are on our way to a solution that leaves both those that don't trust Al feeling safe, and Al with "proper" control.
I have no problem with the intent of the orders. I don't like how they were posted in A) A non-public board [Which you have, YET AGAIN, EVEN WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT ON THE FORUMS, manage to know the *exact* text to] and 😎 That they are made without any form of approval by nations. The Chairman's role is very clear in the Charter, and Albert continues to stomp all over the original purpose.
I wrote my own Executive Order, which I will quote for you here: "Executive Order 0007 (The Best Reform)
by Hekter
Abolishes the Sol Security Council, because we don't need it anymore. It's much less efficient than having one person decide everything for the rest of us.
Don't bother trying to vote on this, or refute it."
I lol'd.
Albert may have done amendments which he thinks are a good iddea, and they may be, though I seriously doubt it, but he has bypassed the ENTIRE security council and the ENTIRE voting process. He has ignored the 8 member states. This is UNACCEPTABLE,
"None of those are dictatorial, and are the sort of things any President of a nation would be able to do. "
Thing is he is NOT the president of a country he is a CHAIRMAN of an ALLIANCE of 8 nations, if every member of the security council made amendments it'd be chaos.
He has less than the power of a prime minister at MOST.
i completely agree that Albert is not a president and should not have the powers of one, and while i do not know the complexities of the Sol charter it does seem a little odd that he would not simply propose these as ammendments or whatever the proper course of action is to effect change. but at the same time those are completely rational and well thought out proposals. they would greatly benifit Sol. if an executive order does not sit well with a representative then simply activate the proper channels to add these ammendments as well as a proposal to forbid executive orders. this infighting only continues to weaken the alliance and its unity, which is paramount to the success of an alliance composed of small nations. correct me on anything i have misspoken about
UNITY
for the betterment of Sol
Reform is needed. But where is the reformist? 😛
"a proposal to forbid executive orders" The abilitys of Sol are limited to those mentioned in the charter, i.e. its not a case of forbidding it, he simply shouldn't have done this.
"this infighting only continues to weaken the alliance and its unity, which is paramount to the success of an alliance composed of small nations"
That doesn't mean the chairman can act unilaterally. Unity is when all nations agree and work together for a common cause, which takes discussion and maybe some arguments, it does not mean the chairman can do whatever he likes and everyone has to comply.
Why do people insist on writing articles on things they know nothing about?
"Hekter is the president of the current host country of Sol. ACCORDING TO THE CHARTER that means he gets to appoint a Vice-Chairman."
How very true. He is allowed by the Charter to appoint anyone in his nation to the position of Vice-Chairman. He chose to APPOINT himself. Ergo, self-appointed. Nothing wrong in that sentence.
Nothing in Order 0002 suggests that anyone would be barred from joining the SolDiers. If a potential SolDier was a previous member of an Airborne, he could keep his membership, while if he joined an Airborne after the date of posting and then applied to join the SolDiers he'd have to give up his Airborne membership. Pure and simple.
Order 0003:
In a case such as that, then it probably would need some clarification, granted.
I now point the readers towards this quote of Kryteshyft's:
This is like Andrew Jackson saying "Marshall made his ruling, now let him enforce it" and forcing thousands of Cherokee to march from Georgia to Oklaholma and die along the way.
Sure...because trying to reform an alliance is like the Trail of Tears. If that's the way you think, then I believe you have some serious ideological problems.
Why would I have to have access to Sol HQ as a vizier? But yes, I've asked Hekter to give Albert access to Sol HQ, that's true.
Btw that 200 gold Sol HQ holds should be distributed back to the 3 nations that donated them in my opinion.
Also it's pathetic that you know everything that happens on the restricted parts of the Sol forums despite not only not having the appropriate level of access but not even being registered at the forums at all. This is a serious threat to our security and it would be much appreciated if your source gave up doing this. You could easily register yourself and get yourself nominated as advisory representative and then you could access all this information legally.
If you can't be bothered to even register at our forums then perhaps you shouldn't write about the happenings there. Especially not this kind of propaganda BS that is like pouring oil on the fire.
"How very true. He is allowed by the Charter to appoint anyone in his nation to the position of Vice-Chairman. He chose to APPOINT himself. Ergo, self-appointed. Nothing wrong in that sentence."
Everything is wrong about that sentence. It's an attempt to show Hekter as a shameless power grab. The fact is that none of the host nations appointed a vice chairman ever as far as my memory goes back and if it was really needed then the president of the host nation was considered vice chairman automatically. Hekter has the position by this tradition.
And while I agree with some of the executive orders and disagree with some others Albert Neurath clearly doesn't have the right to issue them currently. Especially not the one about voting criteria which is an effective charter amendment and should be proposed as a resolution without a question.
@Jeff Hamilton: I appointed Hekter to be the Vice-Chair. I am currently the Representative of the Philippines, I should be the one who is in Hekter's shoes right now. But, it was in my judgement that I am currently not capable of handling the position of as Vice-Chair, so I gave the responsibility to Hekter. Hekter is more experience with these (alliance governing duties).
Nothing in the Sol charter DIRECTLY grants the chairman the power to issue these "executive orders", so these shouldn't exist in the first place. They bypass standard proceedure in the Security Council who have no say in the drafting of these orders. I can hardly see how this is bombastic, sneering, devious article is supposed to being Sol members together instead of tearing them apart.
And the spin machine continues.
"Sure...because trying to reform an alliance is like the Trail of Tears. If that's the way you think, then I believe you have some serious ideological problems."
It's the exact same thing happening: one branch of the government is violating the most important ruling document, and completely stomping on the rights of the other part of the government. Except, in this case, it's like Andrew Jackson's secretary doing it.
I do not fully understand the gravity of this situation, however I do not want to know nor do I want to get involved.
However, I do know that Sol is a GREAT alliance, and I hope all this mess will be resolved in a gentlemanly manner. Please resolve this soon.
So f*ck sh*t up, deal with it, move on, and make a great alliance greater.
Do it and do it soon! We are capable!
- Citizen of Thailand
- Citizen of beloved Sol
The charter also grants no right for the Chairman to issue executive orders. Albert is once again attempting to circumvent the Charter to enhance his own powers and allow him a free hand in doing what he pleases with out needing to consult the rest of Sol.
There is a resolution pending in discussion but not up for Vote yet that would grant him the power to issue these so called orders. There is also a bill (Using the same logic Albert used in putting up a resolution while another had impact on the issue) that declares all the orders written to be invalid.
Sol is indeed faced with 2 roads.
The first leads the way Albert wants to go. It places extreme power in the hands of the chairman and makes the chairman basically the end all be all of Sol. It would be easy to issue an execuitive order suspending elections for a new chairman using an "emergency" to allow it.
The second road is that of the real reformers out there, who want to clairify the charter, keep the Chairmans powers limited and make Sol work in a much more efficient manner while still respecting democracy.
I know which of the 2 roads I would rather see Sol take.
"...deal with it, move on, and make a great alliance greater.
Do it and do it soon! We are capable!"
Hear, Hear!