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With congress elections at the beginning of next week we thought it high time to give players some information about what congress does and what to expect should you get elected.



Who can be in congress

To be eligible for congress in a country, you need at least 100 XP and to be a citizen of that country. To run you need to be a member of the top 5 political parties, if you are not do not worry. Smaller parties will often organise for their candidates to run under the banners of the larger parties so be sure to check with your PP.

Applications for congress start on the 16th of the month and run until the 23rd leaving the party president time on the 24th to order their candidates as they please. The vote will then take place on the 25th of every month.

Every party president has different ways of ordering their candidates but a sure way of getting yourself high up on the list is to be active, help out in any way you can and show you are willing to learn. No party discriminates based on your eAge or experience so even if you are a new player you stand a great chance of getting elected.

If you are interested in applying, an article on “How to apply for congress” will follow.

There are a total of 40 congressman in the eUK (if we have all our regions) and the number of seats parties get is determined by the percent of the vote for that party. I.e. if a party got 10% of the vote, they would get 4 candidates and the top 4 on their list would become MPs.



Your first day as an MP

So the public have shown their faith in you and you've become an MP, but before you go claiming for all your expenses, we should probably see what the job involves.

The job of an MP basically has two parts, control of our borders through citizenship passes along with proposing and voting on laws including holding the CP accountable.



Citizenship passes

At the start of the congress term, every MP receives 4 citizenship passes. Each pass allows one person who applies for citizenship in our country to become a citizen therefore the most people you can let in each term is 4. That doesn't mean though that you should just blindly let anyone in who applies. You need to be very careful who enters the country to make sure that they have our country's best interests at heart. The government often gives advice on applicants with the current system located here. That however shouldn't stop you investigating them yourselves. You could look at things such as their current citizenship, what they have published in their paper down to even who is on their friends list. If the government advise you not to give a person citizenship then they will usually give a reason but if that reason doesn't make sense to you or if you think you have other information you think relevant, then do contact them and make sure the decision made is the right one.



Proposals and votes

The second part of the MPs role is the proposing and voting on laws on the administration tab. Again each congressman starts with 2 proposals that they can make. There is no need for you to use them all (or even any of them) though.

An important thing to remember is that after a proposal is made, it goes to an ingame vote for 24 hours which all MPs and the CP vote on so it's a great idea to discuss the proposal first. Present your reasoning behind why you want to propose it (you can use an article or the forum) and listen to other peoples opinions on it. Your proposals are much more likely to pass if people have had a chance to discuss it or even come up with any changes to make it more agreeable. If it doesn't get the support but gets proposed, it will usually be voted down.
Sometimes the government may ask you to vote a certain way (typically on Natural enemy declarations). This is usually because they have access to sensitive information you may not. This still doesn't mean that you shouldn't question that decision and make sure that it has been thought through.

The proposals an MP can propose and vote on ingame are as follows...

- Change taxes
Often a controversal one and something that often divides the parties. Import and VAT can't be lower than 1% or higher than 99%. Income tax can't be higher than 50%. Raw materials don't have any VAT.

- Country donations
Transfer money or gold from the country's treasury to an organization. During the voting period, the money for the donation is "frozen" and can't be used.

- Issue money
Take gold from the treasury and replace it as money. Includes paying a transaction tax of which is deducted at a rate of 0.005 gold per 1 unit of money.

- Minimum wage
Change the minimum employee salary given by companies. Can not be lower than 0.10 GBP.

- Natural enemy
You can propose any neighbouring country as a natural enemy. If it passes, a free war will be started with the natural enemy. The prosing country citizens get a 10% bonus in fights against the natural enemy.

All of the above require 51% of the vote to pass. If there is a tie then it will fail.

One special law that MPs can propose is for a presidential impeachment. This forces the current CP to step down and puts whoever came second in the election into power. As it is such a big deal, it requires 66% of the vote to pass.

In addition to the above, MPs can also vote on the proposals that only the CP can make. The most common of these are...

- New welcome message
Changes the message that new citizens recieve when they register.

- Alliance (or MPP)
Signs an MPP with another country. Both countries must accept the law and pay 10000 local currency. The money will be taken from their treasury. Alliance will last for 30 days. If there already is an alliance, the current alliance will be extended with 30 days.

As well as a number of other things that are largely irrelevant now (like airstrike and declaring war).

Something to remember, a CP has an infinite number of proposals and can propose anything that congress can but it still needs to be voted on and their vote only counts as 1.



Summary

Whether you have been an MP before or if you are considering applying for the first time this month I hope you have learnt something. Keep an eye out over the next few days for information about how to apply.

If anyone has something they think we missed, feel free to comment and we will add it in.

Thanks for reading.
Lightning43
ESO Councillor