SYMistan Senate (No Spam - New thread)

[CM]

This is where the formal deliberations will be undertaken for the SYMISTAN government. Welcome to our senate. A tent pegged down on three sides. Please leave the horses and trucks parked outside. No weapons will be brought in here. Lastly we have no toliets so please relieve yourself nearly 0.5 kilometers away. Thank you.

DM instructions:

Before you decide who will be president or prime minister. Decide what form of government do you want. Ie do you want the American system, the British, the French, the German, the Saudi, the Indian, the Russian etc.

Each one is different and each one has its good and bad points. I will list the 3 main generic forms of government first.

1. The British system:
This is usually where there is a Prime minister with alot of work and a figure head - head of state ie the Queen or King or a lame duck president. In the british system elections are held in a very specific and peculiar fashion which is to complicated for this game. Its too complicated for real life at that. So what i am gonna describe is a generic form used by a majority of commonwealth nations.

Firstly everything is decided by 2/3 majority. Not 50%. So you have to 67% of the votes to get anything past. It makes things very very very difficult to get done but you have the largest support available. You have a senate and HOR. But since we are a small group we will use only the senate. I want to keep this opening part simple so i am only limiting myself to the decision making process. There are other peculiar things but that is too complciated if we play this game for the first time.

2. The American system:
Here you have a very strong president, with a semi strong Vice president. Both have their roles and jobs. While in the british form you have 1 person who decides it all. Here you have two who work together and belong to the same party. But basically the President decides everything.

In this system you have the 50% vote. So anything that is over 50% you can get it passed right away. It can cause alot of problems if the opposition is not happy and it is passed anyway.

3. The French system:
This is the most difficult system but the most equal. This is where the President and Prime Minister co-habitat together. Meaning they have equal power adn they don't have always belong to the same party. Actually i think they have belonged to different parties in the majority of cases. So this causes alot of problems and stuff if the two parties don't get along.

Again here it is 2/3 majroity. But if the PM and President have different views it makes it much more complicated to run things.

4. The Pakistani System (third world despot system):
Good old dictatorship. Nothing to explain there. I am just adding this as an option to discuss

Once you guys decide which system you want you can elect the President and PM from inbetween the 16 players we have including the independent character. Then everybody else plays ministers and senate others play the opposition. Once you decide on which form of government you want you guys get to decide who your political partners will be.

Summary:
1. Decide on which model of govt you want.
2. Decide on political leanings and which/who will form the govt.
3. Elect President or PM or both depending on system.

[Magrus]

For myself, I'm torn between wanting things done quickly and efficiently, and wanting a manner in which to oppose decisions I feel could be harmful and bad.
Personally, so long as the manner dissallows one person holding supreme power, and things move along efficiently in the government to pass things to help the country I don't care.

However, looking at the long term, and the short term, I'm left with this thought. It might be best to vote on a goverment official who must be approved with a 2/3 vote. This official should then be allowed a position in power which would automatically give him a strong pull in a vote with the senate. Let's say, he carries 1/3 of the votes in his decisions, and the rest of the senate divvies up the remaining 2/3 of the vote.

This then allows the head person to squash a situation which has become stagnant, and still allows the senate to oppose his decrees if need be. Essentially any cause the top official, lets go with President for simplicity sake, joins in on, will win unless there is a landslide majority in the senate.

This should make it so that since the senate had to by far approve this President, they should agree on things and everything should move along fairly well. However, in the case Senate was wrong, they can still band together and fight his decisions successfully.

Opinions?

[jopperm2]

My vote is in favor of the British system. Since there are so many different factions the American system would cause too many problems with abused minorities.

[blake]

Because we must have a government, I feel we should model ourselves after the French, we want everyone in our beautiful country to be equal.

[jopperm2]

Now is a time of change though and if we want anything to get done in an acceptable time frame we need to have the ability to act quickly. I think the British system is a good basis for this.

[Magrus]

Well, we can move on this thing with just those who voted now I'll side with the British one to end this and keep moving. However...where's the rest of the senate? Did they get waylaid on the way to the privvy?

There can't be forward movement in the government if the Senate doesn't even vote on how to form our government.

[arno_v]

I'm here, reading thinking, but I must say I haven't made a conclusion yet, so wait till I have discussed this (for the second time) with my fellow Muslims.

[jopperm2]

I too would like to see some more action. We need to get things moving. I propose we enact a quorum rule that states that an issue is not closed unless a certain number of senators have voted. Thoughts?

[arno_v]

I think we should go for the British system. Since it is said to work easier than the French system but does require a strong support from the senate.

[Magrus]

That may end up suspending this senate's decisions indefinately based on what's been seen so far. I say the opposite, if a set amount of time goes by without a set number of votes, we move forward based on those votes already entered by those participating.

[jopperm2]

Perhaps we should include a time provision. What I'm worried about is a whole party voting for something and then it passes before other parties have time to react.

[Magrus]

How about this. We revote on the issue, if in four days from that vote everyone hasn't voted on the issue we tally the votes which were submitted and act upon them. That gives everyone a little over half a week to check on an issue, think it over and then vote on it before it is closed.

Possibly an appeal to, in the event a large number of people miss out for some reason we can do a revote but it has to be done within say 2 days time.

That may keep things moving yes?

[jopperm2]

Before deciding we should get at least a few more opinions from the other parties I think. It would not be good for us(the democrats) to push the issue until there are other perspectives. Thoughts from the other parties?

[Magrus]

That is a good idea, we wouldn't want to make things unbalanced.

[jopperm2]

At the moment I am very busy with business ventures, but you may want to PM prominent members of the other parties and invite them into the discussion. If you do, send me copies so that I can read them between flights and conference calls please.