The Concept of Governance

Day 2,938, 12:00 Published in USA USA by Hale26

The Concept of Governance


I don't eRep too much these days - or at least, I try not to. You know how it is; While you love your e-American community, you got some things to take care of. So today after getting a few things done, I decided to login and check out how a surprisingly close CP Election ended up going. Largely to see if WO won by a large margin or a small margin.

You can imagine that I was surprised with the results. I'm not the only one either;



There are a number of reasons Gnilraps won. Quite a few people have said multis played a part. I'm not going to debate that because this letter is aimed at eAmerica at large. And to be frank, eAmerica at large doesn't yet care for those theories.

It would be sensical to say that the "boring" stability of this month, lack of media and campaigning in general by WildOwl has a factor in this result. Likewise, Gnilraps' own personal popularity as a past member of three of the “Top Five” parties and outstanding record in e-service (Founder of EZC, for example) must have been important. He ran a beautiful campaign too. SFP's own media machine was amazing as it always is.

In a way, this was a good exercise for eAmerican society as a whole - it has, as it does on occasion, expressed that it does value activity. What comes to mind is BB's round 2 win over Tyler when he wasn't able to campaign. Activity is valued by "the base". Much credit again goes to SFP - you people are a machine.

All the electionering aside, we now have a problem - Gnilraps will not be the President for very long.


There are three laws I would like to direct you to:
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/board,49.0.html
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/topic,34108.0.html
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/topic,34475.0.html

When Plato changed the game to include dictatorships and revolution, Congress responded. In its opinion, we shouldn't be opening ourselves up to the great risk that was introduced. That risk was that our country could suffer irreparable damage while we sleep. I'll paint you a scenario;

We're at war with Chile right now. Lets say, we have no dictator - what Gnilraps is proposing. And, lets say a Chilean buys an American MU - an incredibly easy thing to do. With that American MU, they can start a revolution to become dictator. We would receive 3 hours notice to mobilize our entire military structure and our allies towards defending our "country". Forget the fact that we have a small player base (less than 800), meaning mobilizing a large amount of players would be difficult.

That 3 hour preparation time could come and go while we're asleep.

The battle would be over by the morning. In one battle, we would've lost our Country. The Dictator could now get our country wiped by not responding to enemy NEs and transfer 4million USD out of the nation by the time we can launch another fight to overthrow the dictator. And, we could only win that fight if we timed it properly (considering that we have to be awake to fight). Then if we win and regain control over our Country we would possibly be down 4million USD, have our entire MPP stack shredded, and have possibly 30 of our territories occupied. Lets remember that when America is attacked, we are attacked en masse. I'm talking a 4 country attack, at least.

Congress responded to this possibility, rather sternly. The President would become a "Defensive Dictator", a device used by many countries across the game. Now, lets say the above scenario plays out - instead of Chile owning our country with 1 win, all that would happen is we would lose our Defensive Dictator. An American would still be President. Now, we have 10 days to prepare to either reinstall our Defensive Dictator or fight a Chilean dictator attempt.

With this came a series of laws.

The President must become USAF Commanding Officer, therefore, Dictator.

No one can fight against the Defensive Dictator or for a Rogue Dictator, or they will be blacklisted from Congress

Upon the fall of the Defensive Dictator, the President will be given 200,000 USD automatically to reestablish the position in 10 days. In the spirit of that law, it's expected that the Executive will actually try to establish themselves as our Defensive Dictator.

With scenarios like the above, Congress' response seems fairly standard. Disagreeable, sure. But understandable.


Back to our problem.



We face a situation wherein less than 62 hours, we will have our President impeached because he is fighting a rule that over 66% of Congress recently upheld in a vote. In the middle of a war with Chile and in the midst of an alliance shakeup, we will lose the country's first SFP President after he won an election he did not expect to win.

I am a WeThePeople Congressperson. And I personally have grievances against Gnilraps, largely for the complete disregard he has shown towards my own party, both in his thread on our party forum and in calling us “groupthink parties (Feds/USWP/WTP) which are basically three different varieties of vanilla”. But, that is campaigning - it can be divisive. We saw something similar, in Wild Owl saying that he would go against formalities and not seek the SFP endorsement. 
Sure, he wasn't going to win. But we do things like this because at the end of the day, we all play for the same team. And frankly, proper discussion should be the conerstone of Representative Democracy - that’s one of the key principles of responsible populism, WeThePeople’s governing ideology.

Gnilraps, you won the election with little over half of the people's support. But like every Executive, you must now govern the entire nation. This was not a complete referendum on the Defensive Dictatorship - this was an election between you, a charming accomplished candidate, and an older government. You have been given the opportunities to bring about a real change to how we do governance in eAmerica.

December 5th was only an episode in the ongoing national debate on Defensive Dictatorship. Still the Congress disagrees and still your election win can be attributed to a number of factors completely not relating to the DD. The debate has not ended.



As a Populist representative in Congress, I have a deep respect for elections and proper campaigning. That being said, populism is often unadulterated into mob-rule. Rather, populism is using elections for their intended purpose - advancing the public discussion, not as winner take all, divisive blood sport.



With that said, I have advice for both our Congress and our President, if I may offer it.


My advice to Gnilraps is that he take this opportunity to advance the debate as our President, advance our Military, our Foreign affairs, our community (Anyone remember The Save Erepublik Initiative?) and our Executive to get to the real point of all this - a better game for the average eAmerican player. All governments need to modify their goals when hit with the practical realities of governance. This isn’t that different.



My advice to my fellow Congressmen is that you do not hastily impeach Gnilraps. Yes, you have the votes and the power to. However, we must respect the election results and what they’ve told us. And, we must have some sort of respect for what Gnilraps might do when he assumes government. If Gnilraps wishes to not be Dictator but instead leave a figurehead as Dictator, I believe that would be a reasonable compromise, for example. Consider:



If we impeach the President without trying to reason to him our legislative realities, are we fulfilling our end of that whole “governance” thing? Are we advancing the national debate?

 Or are we playing out the divisive politics we have seen in this election? 




Elections can be deceptive things, especially in a First-Past-The-Post system like eRep. Oftentimes we confuse a “win” for consensus. And that’s fine - Election winners must be allowed to enjoy their moment in the sun.



However, at some point, we all must come around to the idea that governance is not as simple as winning 46% of the electorate or holding 31 Congress seats. Governance is for the nation.

This is a lesson that the 96th Congress and our President will have to learn very quickly.




Hale26

WeThePeople Congressman



Note: I voted against Gnilrap’s proposal for a 1 month reprieve to the Defensive Dictatorship. However, this article is not aimed at necessarily arguing for the DD but rather to illustrate that both the 96th Congress and Gnilraps need to learn how to govern the nation together, rather than rushing to unilateral action.


Note 2: I know the election was splendid but we’re losing rn. Hit your COTD for America.