While quickly backreading through previous assembly votes, I passed upon Amendment to the Regional Officers Act, which removes Delegate authority to control Regional Officer positions. In a similar vein, the Regional Communications Act gives the Delegate authority to control gameside mass communications. Like the Regional Officers Act, this assignment of gameside powers to the Delegate was written under an older government system with a more powerful Delegate and less powerful Prime Minister than what we have today, before the Prime Minister could delegate Regional Officer positions. This amendment reforms section 2(4), 2(5), and 3 of the Regional Communications Act.
2. Mass Communication
[…]
(4) The Prime MinisterDelegate may, at their discretion, enact further restrictions, guidelines, or approval processes on the use of mass communications.
(5) The Council on Regional Security may temporarily suspend the provisions contained herein or remove the mass communications powers of a regional officerfor themselves or any duly chosen surrogates for the purposes of regional security.
3. Infractions
(1) Infractions may be brought before the High Court in a court case. For the duration of the court proceedings, the Delegate may suspend the mass communication capabilities of the accused.
I’ll direct you to something I said a little ago:
The Delegate is an elected ceremonial head of state with absolute in-game power, but very limited legal power. The Prime Minister is the head of government and leads the cabinet, while they have less in-game power than the Delegate but much more legal power.
That’s basically the crux of how our head of state and head of government function.
The Delegate holds all in-game power but their role is quite ceremonial. This is actually a really sensible repeal as we repealed a similar idea in another act, and this was a contradiction needing to be fixed.
If that is even the case (which afaik I don’t think it is), then shouldn’t we align this amendment to fit better with the other de jure powers, which would be for Prime Minister?
Still against for the reasons in the previous amendment.
Actually, it’s the very same system. Just to state the record correctly.
At the very least, if any changes are going to be made, let’s make sure the High Court has the power to order the Delegate to suspend an RO in a case involving the abuse of the RO’s powers.
The CRS is a much more appropriate body than the High Court for this. Not to say that the High Court can’t remove or restrict someone’s RO powers through a court decision, but in the kinds of cases I interpret the removing ROs section of the Regional Officers Act as originally being written for the CRS is a more appropriate body for swift action.
It actually strikes me as a bit odd that we have to explicitly state that “Infractions may be brought before the High Court in a court case.” I don’t think it’s actually super clear what kind of court case that’s meant to be — it sort of matches the definition of a review request, except those are limited in the Judiciary Act to matters of “the Charter or any other constitutional law” and the Regional Communications Act is not a constitutional law. I guess it could also be a criminal trial for corruption in some cases, but I feel like it is entirely possible for someone to send a mass communication that is, say, not respectful but also not criminal.
That said, I think the CRS is a reasonable institution to be able to suspend communications powers for the purposes of regional security — i.e. we can expand 2(5) to include all regional officers — but I’m not really sure that a regional security body is the best fit for determining when mass communications are not “respectful” or “honest”.
I’ve assumed that “infractions” was referring to Curlyhoward v. Kris Kringle-type corruption cases, but the law as currently written is unclear. I’ve cleared that up, while expanding 2(5) to include all regional officers.
I always wonder, when I see phrases similar to this in our laws, what is the necessity? Doesn’t the High Court, by the Charter, already have the power to conduct criminal trails?
Agreed, Section 3 of the Regional Communications Act is pretty much entirely redundant since Section 3(2) of the Judiciary Act allows for temporary injunctions, which can include the suspension of an RO’s communications powers. Removing Section 3 entirely would be better.
Regional Officers are anyone who has regional officer powers in the on-site region (currently the WA Delegate, Prime Minister, the Ministers of Culture and Integration, the OWL Director, 4 RMB Moderators, 3 CRS Members, and the Pollmaster), so both the Delegate and PM count as regional officers.