Was the seizure of the treasury for security illegal?

Day 2,370, 05:53 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Brian Boru


With the recent nonsense, citizens may wonder what sort of country we have. We have no constitution to guide us on how to deal with political, economic and military problems except the game mechanics. We have no written laws regulating behaviour of players in office or citizens in general, except for the eRepublik Rules themselves, and they're not enforced by the players. More often than not, it seems that chaos rules the day.

So, is Ireland a country without laws?

The answer is no. Ireland has laws, and everyone generally obeys them. The President, his Cabinet, the Dáil (Congress), the Army, political parties and the people. Together, these laws form our constitution. They have yet to be written down in a single place, something I hope to correct soon.

What are these laws?

They are the actions of every government, army chief of staff, party president, and finance minister during pretty much every one of their actions, as judged correct by the people via their consent, often as reactions to a crisis or a political problem. Generally, our people follow the precedents set by previous governments in order to keep some consistency in governing our country.

People who break the precedents for no good reason are often punished legitimately by the people at elections, by congress through impeachments and even via action of the civil service. Some are even more or less permanently ostracised from public office for a wide variety of offences. Not only does the law exist, but it clearly has the power that the law should have.



Which laws used and breached during the recent trouble?

The main piece of law that was used is perhaps our oldest one: When a President is elected illegitimately or goes rogue, the major factions have the right to defend the sovereignty of the country by seizing the treasury for security purposes.

This law was created in 2008 when Victor Petrescu took control of the country with the help of a large group of foreign infiltrators. The main political factions immediately secured the treasury, keeping it from the hands of the usurper, and organised resistance against the regime. If all of this is legitimate the first time, it must be legitimate in the same circumstances later. So the Finance people acted perfectly legally in securing the treasury from the President's hands.

By contrast, Daniel Plainview broke the rules set by precedent about Presidents interfering in the business of political parties. He parachuted into the Labour Party election for PP. There was no legitimate reason for him to do so, and what he did was impeachable on its own. The only legitimate reason under Irish law to interfere in the workings of a party's internal leadership is if there are attempts by non-members to take it over. That law was created when the Patriots were PTOed, and I intervened as President to cool down the situation by ordering that the illegitimate PP of the Patriots select no candidate for President. The Bremen Clubhouse incident could also be considered a precursor, though that was a foreign attempt and so is a slightly different circumstance.

Over the course of the next while, I hope to collect the various laws that we have created by our common experience in this game, and submit them for examination in another article.

In the mean time, we should all rest assured that we don't live in a chaotic mess of a country, that we have laws, that those laws are generally obeyed, and those that don't follow them are punished appropriately.