A Working Government with the FreeDems

[Inxheneu Crova]

The FreeDems call for a "working government". What do we mean by this?

The FreeDems won't use the creation of empty bureaus or offices as an excuse for inaction, and will close obsolete or abandoned offices by Prime Dictate at the first opportunity.

We won't create Deputy Ministerial posts as sinecures, but only when a proven need exists.

We will also legislate to give all public servants, from Ministers down, the right to take a formal leave of absence from their post if personal circumstances require it. Any leave of absence will be publicly announced and the responsibilities of the absentee will be redistributed, where necessary.

We will also however insist on individuals taking responsibility for unannounced absences, or the complete desertion of their post.

Any Minister or Deputy Minister who loses their seats in the Ziu due to non-attendance will, if they do not resign in consequence, be dismissed from the Cabinet.

And any Cabinet Minister who fails to respond to two formal requests from the Seneschal to report to Cabinet, without an adequate explanation, will be dismissed

We also make this pledge - that if we cannot, due to circumstances beyond our control, maintain a government team adequate to the task, we will resign and ask His Majesty to dissolve the Cosa.

That's how seriously we take the idea of a "working government". The fading away of the coalition shows the deleterious effects of "zombie government". And taking responsibility is the FreeDem way.

Vote for responsible government!
¡Votetz FreeDem!

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Nov 27, 2016 23:07:20 GMT -6 Inxheneu Crova said:

The FreeDems won't use the creation of empty bureaus or offices as an excuse for inaction, and will close obsolete or abandoned offices by Prime Dictate at the first opportunity.

Does this apply to bureaus/offices established by statute, or just those administratively created by the Seneschal or a minister? If the former, that would potentially mean a lot of revision to statutory law by unilateral executive action.

Regarding the rest of your post, the leave of absence idea could be a good one. Overall, though, what I see is reminiscent of a statement made in the FreeDem manifesto thread about how the FreeDems will make sure the Seneschal has the power to fire inactive ministers. In my opinion this is missing the point. The problem is not the lack of a power to fire people. Firing people has never been the issue. The question is: if you fire someone, with whom do you replace them? What do you do when the people you were counting on to keep the government running at the beginning of the term go inactive?

I don't have good solutions for this, but the first step to finding a solution is understanding the true nature of the problem. Recognizing that an officeholder is inactive and talking about removing them is easy. It's what comes next that's hard.

[Inxheneu Crova]

If a bureau is inactive, or obsolete, then its a waste of legislative space to go through the Clark when that could be used for more important things. El Lex actually recommends that PDs be used for precisely the purpose of organising the structure of the government.

I should point out that because a bureau is itself superfluous the idea behind might be a good one. Thats why the PD would absorb the function involved back into the office of the Minister proper, rather than keeping the respnsibility with [Insert name here].

The Bureau of Corporations is an example. People could have fun with Talossan corporations, and there's a fairly elaborate law governing them. Changes to that would need a detailed discussion, of course. But at the moment no one is in charge of promoting the opportunity to start a corporation because, theoretically, there's a bureau for that.

More to the point I'd be worried that most of the time creating a bureau or an "office" or whatever makes people feel that they've done the job, and not thinking much about what comes after.

The advantage of the legal leave of absence is that its really clear to everyone whats up, and its designed to be temporary-if someone just needs to step back long term, then they really should resign.

The justification should be by the honour system-so if theres a really difficult situation thats none of our business, a person can take some time on their word and get back to us later, and nobody just disappears. A situation like the one Sir Trotxa just found himself, happily a "casualty" of professional success in this case, is a perfect example.

I agree that our labour shortage is the greatest challenge we have. Its not new either, and we don't have any magic solutions (unfortunately).

It'll take patience, some new thinking about how we can keep people interested, and some experimentation. The suggestion in our manifesto, and because this is a knotty problem I wouldn't presume its the only possible solution, is using the desire to take part in politics, or at least support those who do, to persuade people to do the boring stuff like setting up Clarks, updating the laws, and posting regularly on the wesite and social media. The Talossan hunger for decorations and titles shoyld also be exploited ;-)

I think in the short run making sure that we are showing signs of national life at this low point in activity is the most important. We thus buy some time, and hopefully get some attention from the outside world, until we can chart a new direction together, which is what we hope the National Dialogue will help us do.

I'm not going to pretend the FreeDems could keep things running single handed forever, but we can at the very least try and get the RT over the hump. Thats why we're clear about taking responsibility if things just get away from us. If we're not moving the cart forward, we need to hand over the reins. That would be embarrassing and difficult, but one has to give other people a chance if one isn't up to it any more.