I object to the motion to cancel voting. I do not believe the Assembly should embargo the confirmation of two eminently qualified nominees until the CRS provides “the vaguest of answers” to questions about its internal deliberations. If members of the Assembly believe that such responses are material to their evaluation of these nominees, then they may vote accordingly.
I find it strange that there’s been an increased desire to hold the PM and Cabinet accountable, but that hasn’t carried over to the CRS, which is arguably more important to hold accountable
It’s not apparent to me that asking the CRS to reveal information about its internal deliberations is really holding them “accountable.” In any event, I do not believe that this is a proper way to ensure accountability. Both Henn and Pronoun are qualified and should be confirmed to the CRS. As I said, if Assembly members feel that responses to these specific questions are material to their evaluation of these nominees’ qualifications, then they can vote accordingly. But their nominations should not be held up in the name of some generalized push for accountability.
The motion is recognised by the Chair, as the motion to cancel has been objected to by another Assembly member, voting will continue and end at its original pre-defined date and time.
2024-08-30T21:15:00Z.
I think it’s silly to not want to hold the CRS accountable now because we want to add more people to it. The fact of the matter is that Kris, the most active member of the CRS in this discussion so far, and one of two to post here, has refrained from answering question that are not a threat to security, and he’s also recommended that Griffindor not share public information when this discussion was still in the Private Halls. That is by no means something this Assembly should be supporting.
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You are not actually holding anyone “accountable” through those questions. So what if the nomination was unanimous? Or if it wasn’t? The fact of the matter is that whether Henn or Pronoun received a unanimous or a majority vote, we as an institution agreed that they were qualified for membership.
Unanimous = CRS had no qualms with this applicant whatsoever.
Not unanimous = Somebody had qualms, but the CRS decided to look over them anyway, in which case an explanation for the assembly (insofar as it can be redacted appropriately) would be reasonable and proper.
I doubt either was not unanimous, but that’s not the point here. You can’t just get to decide that a question asked of you (as an institution) is important or not.
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I have to agree with @Legend again, also thank you at @Welly! For objecting to the canceled the vote, I don’t get it why until now that other CRS members are posting on either this thread or Pronoun’s thread, this concerns me that their no communication between the CRS and the Assembly entirely, also @Griffindor is the delegate, if he wants to share already public information, while in the private halls, I say he should do it! However, Kris continues to frustrate me, ever since the Election, and one of the reasons now of frustration now is the CRS’s lack of communication towards to the assembly, even just to ask a question that could be a yes or no answer, so yet again I am deeply concerned about the CRS, and the ability to run if they can’t communicate.
I am sorry you feel that way but I am not playing the game to be politically astute or to get along with people, I am simply conveying my views the way I see them. If I think something is nonsensical then I am saying that, no matter how much it could get me in trouble with public sentiment.
No, it would neither be reasonable nor proper. I recognise that you disagree with this but I firmly believe in the concept of collective responsibility for multi-member institutions such as the Cabinet, the Court, and the CSS: there can be internal disagreements and vigorous debate but once a decision is made the institution speaks with one voice.
To the extent that the CSS has already spoken in supporting the nomination of Pronoun and Henn, any internal disagreements are irrelevant because the institution already made a decision. If individual CSS members have issues with the nominees then they are perfectly within their rights to raise them in their capacity as legislators.
Apology accepted, I know that we’re all not going to be friends, and we all have different political views on what’s the right direction for TSP, but the best thing we can do at this moment is work together to make things better for everyone.
That’s a non-sequitur. I agree about collective responsibility and institutions speaking with one voice, but that has no bearing on whether the institution (with that one voice) gives insight on things that were considered in making that decision.
Principally true, but the threshold for an individual member to do so is higher because they won’t want to publicly dissent with the institution they’re a part of unless they feel like their hand is forced in the matter.
Here’s what worries me.
If anybody had asked me 3 days ago to make a guess as to how the Henn nomination was handled internally, I would have said it was probably something like the following: Henn sent an application, a few CRS members replied with “oh yeah this is an obvious candidate, full support”, somebody called a vote, a few CRS members voted yes until it reached quorum, then Kris wrote up a blurb to post. There probably wasn’t even anybody that had a concern there.
What worries me is that you’re so hellbent on not answering this simple yes/no question, a simple question that reveals nothing about security-sensitive information, reveals nothing about internal processes of the CRS, and would not reveal any individual CRS members’ opinion. HS had no qualms simply giving a one-word answer in the Pronoun thread, which was perfectly fine and adequate. No such answer was given here, despite all this discussion about it.
I must therefore assume that the Henn nomination did not go as expected and that the CRS had concerns. That principally would be fine as well if the CRS talked about these concerns and went through with the nomination anyway. But - it should say something, because depending on what those concerns are, other Legislators may be in a position to have the same concern as well, and simply stonewalling the question away is not fair to the one institution that the CRS has to actually kinda-sometimes-a-little-bit answer to.
The CRS is the one institution that has the power to override the executive government. South Pacificans need to be able to trust them unconditionally. Stuff like this erodes that trust.
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I did not apologise for anything.
Yes, I am absolutely hellbent on not disclosing the details of our votes and I would’ve done exactly the same in the Pronoun thread.
I’m going to be entirely transparent that I read the Pronoun thread before reading this one. In that thread, no one had responded to you at all, making me think any response was needed, so I simply took it upon myself to respond.
Here, I read the thread and realized that Kris was not responding, and that by answering in the other thread I had undermined his position in this thread. Regardless of if I agree with his position or not, to do the opposite of what he said he intended to do quite so publicly wasn’t really appropriate of me—instead, if I disagree I should start an internal conversation about how I think the CRS’ approach to the question should change. However, I had already made the post in Pronoun’s thread, there wasn’t really a way to delete or un-post it, especially given you posted your response 8 minutes later (which it was entirely fair for you to do as soon as you saw the post). I have already apologized to Kris because it wasn’t right for me to undermine the approach he was taking publicly unless the CRS collectively chose to change course first, and my doing so was my personal mistake which undermined collegiality with one of my colleagues. It isn’t evidence of a grand conspiracy theory about relative support for different nominees which you are exceedingly attached to in order to create the perception of secrecy and impropriety. Kris and I’s difference of approach stems a lot more from my belief in the CRS’s secrecy being more practical (e.g., would this disclosure meaningfully harm regional security?) and less principled (e.g., we will not disclose an internal discussion because it would set the precedent we always should) and isn’t reflective of anything you’re implying about these two nominations.
Believe me or not, that’s the sauce. I have no reservations about Henn’s nomination, I think they’re going to be a strong addition to the CRS for all of the reasons outlined in Kris’s initial nomination post, which by the way represents an accurate reflection of the CRS’s position.
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For the future, should a situation like this happen again, might it be practical for the CRS to communicate on wether they should reveal the information before publicly responding? I understand your misgivings about having undermined Kris, but I don’t know that Kris should have been able to just choose the precedent of how the CRS would respond to the questioning without informing anyone else.
Even if you started an internal discussion to argue for revealing the information, Kris had already responded, and if the CRS came to the decision to share that information Kris is now undermined even further.
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I guess I interpreted this wrong?
Anyways, I am now confused, are we arguing for Kris and the CRS, to reveal the information, or about the CRS’s lack of communication?
Conversations can change and adapt. Right now I’d like for the CRS to reveal the information, but the more pressing issue is their communication around whether they should reveal the information.
So I guess it is both, I am just leaving it with that, I agree conversations do adapt and change, and clearly really did, yes it would be great if the CRS would reveal information, but like said the more pressing issue is going to be communication in general, it seems to me in my point of view, that the CRS, very rarely communicates with the Assembly, and thankfully, Henn and Pronoun’s appointments came to be, this was basically our only chance to talk about CRS, with CRS members. I think their needs to be more communication between CRS and Assembly, because if Henn and Pronoun did not get nominated, and these threads were never posted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and we still wouldn’t have any communication between the region’s highest security body, and the part of government that passes all the laws. Also, I get it that @HumanSanity and @KrisKringle spoke on behalf of CRS.
But, none of the other CRS members spoke up, until @HumanSanity, answer @Griffindor’s question on the pronoun thread, why may I ask no other member else spoke up during the period before @HumanSanity answered?
Also, Why is the CRS, so scared to reveal information? Was this agreed upon by all members not to share information? I checked the charter and there is no section stating that the CRS cannot reveal information.
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I don’t know where you got this idea but you are completely mistaken.
What exactly did you expect CSS members to say?
I don’t know where you got this idea that we are scared, but you are mistaken.
If I am mistaken, then when does the Assembly talk with CRS, about security and what we’re talking about currently communication. Are we just left out? This is the first time the assembly is talking about CRS, since I got here two months ago, closing in on three months.
They could have said what @HumanSanity, said earlier, or they can put in their opinions, of why they think not to share information for example.
It seems to me right now, you guys are a little scared to release this information to the assembly, because most likely you never done it before (at least what I have seen).
Kris, it interests me that you pick those to quote, as I think their was other things that you could of or the other CRS could have answered,
I think these could also have been picked.
I don’t mean to put this on you, because I really don’t think you are to blame in any way, but this right here is a clear example of our ongoing issue with government accountability.
Why would you expect there to be a dedicated time for the Assembly to discuss security? You are a legislator, if you have questions about security or believe the CSS is not being sufficiently forthcoming then you should post a topic about it whenever you think is best.
Obviously as a CSS member I am not a fan of people asking privileged details about our discussions, but as a legislator it bothers me that my fellow legislators would be victims of a bystander effect where they expect someone to start discussions rather than starting them themselves. There isn’t someone else, each of you are the ones who can get the debate started.
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