The Troubles of the New Cabinet
After the elections, @KrisKringle was elected Prime Minister of The South Pacific. His term began on August 1st, the day in which he announced his nominations for Minister of Defense (MoD) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).
Kris Kringle’s nominee for Minister of Defence is @Heliseum, a prominent member of the South Pacific Special Forces (SPSF), who was recently promoted to the rank of lieutenant by the Admiralty. The same day of the announcement, Heliseum published his extensive campaign/objectives for the term. In his post, he covered several plans for the SPSF, taking into account its currently depressing situation, despite the surge of activity in NS military gameplay. We’ll now cover some of the important points of his agenda:
First, Heliseum talks about making the SPSF a much more visible part of the TSP community as part of a new recruitment agenda for the organization. For this, he has suggested the following measures:
- Restart and improve the processing of SPSF applications.
- Restart the publication of public reports.
- Recruit actively by telegram.
- Possibly change the application method overall.
- Hold regular small-scale events in the TSP Discord server.
Secondly, the MoD nominee writes about the importance of training in a military organization, mentioning that to have a more active officer corps, which the SPSF certainly needs, is not a simple process in which more officers or admirals can be simply appointed to the Wardroom. Heliseum seeks to reduce the time any SPSF member would spend as a Cadet, the minimum rank, awarded when anyone joins the organization, by starting training to Ensign immediately upon joining the SPSF, which he proclaims can be done just by showing up to update. This is not the case for officer-level training, which requires more time and effort. Some of the approaches when it comes to training in the SPSF that Heliseum plans to do are:
- Conducting a personnel audit, to check who can be coaxed back into service, as well as trained further or promoted.
- Rewriting the training guides.
- Taking a more proactive approach to training.
- Exploring the possibility of hosting wargames and simulated operations, on our own or with allies.
Thirdly, Heliseum talks about the SPSF’s Military Culture, where he mentions his sadness about the essentially dead level of activity in the SPSF channels on Discord. He defends that the SPSF should be an engaging community to be in, where people are recognized for their work, and where a sense of camaraderie and pride is present among the members of the organization. To this effect, he plans to:
- Bring back the ribbons for month-to-month healthy competitive recognition.
- Recognize any significant milestones of each SPSF member.
- Recognize SPSF members for service in notable operations.
- Start a project to chronicle the history of the SPSF to possibly engage newcomers with retired veterans.
Finally, the last paragraphs about Heliseum’s agenda are dedicated to the Tidal Force, which is the part of the SPSF which has been consistently neglected the most for a very long time. The Tidal Force, as a reservist force, could be useful at times. That’s why Heliseum has planned to:
- Conduct a personnel audit to reactivate the Tidal Force.
- Construct a Tidal Force detagging apparatus to give those who can’t make the update a chance to participate in clearing the detagging backlog.
- Leverage the Tidal Force as pilers for the wargames and simulations mentioned previously.
- Appoint a reliable Tidal Force Coordinator.
After the publication of MoD nominee Heliseum’s agenda, discussion started. There was conversation about the possible modification of the ranks in the Tidal Force, as well as possible prizes for reaching certain milestones in the SPSF. Some asked if Heliseum was planning to feed the SPSF Cat. Others asked the MoD nominee about his thoughts about current TSP laws about the SPSF: the Military Code. Heliseum expressed his mixed feelings about said current laws, pointing out several points of failure the Military Code presents, but he claimed that fixing these laws will not expedite a revival of the SPSF, as other actions are needed beforehand.
Moving on to KrisKringle’s second nomination: @lordnwahs as MoFA. This nomination is technically, not a nomination, as LordNwahs was already MoFA before KrisKringle’s term began. This led to discussion about the necessity of having to vote for LordNwahs to be MoFA during KrisKringle’s term. Some said that the vote wasn’t necessary, as technically there is no change in office holders. Chair of the Assembly @Welly initially agreed with such point, but due to a call for a vote on LordNwahs’ appointment, his (re)appointment as MoFA was also put to a vote, with the main intention of reconfirming the Assembly’s trust in the minister.
Soon enough, on August 6th, both of KrisKringle’s designated ministers were voted on by the Assembly. In order for each appointment to pass, they require a majority greater than 50%. However, in this case, both appointments managed to get an approval of 100%, with no Nay votes. 36 people voted in this Cabinet confirmation voting. With this, Heliseum is TSP’s new Minister of Defense, and LordNwahs will keep being TSP’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.
So far, KrisKringle’s Cabinet consists of two ministers. Previous Coalitions had at least three or more ministers, so it’s clear that some ministers are missing. In his cabinet appointments thread on the TSP forums, Kringle announced his open call for applications for Minister of Culture (MoC) and Minister of Integration (MoI). On August 6th, he made a post about it in the office of the cabinet thread.
KrisKringle hasn’t nominated anyone yet for these positions, so if any TSP citizen is interested, the applications still seem to be open. Finding people to nominate as ministers has been a relatively consistent problem for a long time in TSP, at least it’s what it seems. This is a problem that can be solved if more of TSP’s members participated in its politics, but how many south pacificans would want to be part of TSP’s Government? For all that we know, though, is that everyone in TSP is invited to take part in it.
Written by: @Vrigny