The Speaker's Desk

Wait, so my citizenship is being revoked? I only disappeared on this forum website, because I was active on the Nationstates website.

Fregerson:

As such, we will be correcting this error by adding them to the citizenship sheet, with their citizenship effective date being 7th September 2021,

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Pay closer attention, @The New Siberian islands... It's not being revoked.

Short Announcement

I intend to write an opening address for my new term, which also acts as a closing address for my previous term. Right now, however, I am waiting on a few things, which I believe would impact the shape of the Office.

One thing is clear, however. This is a Public Service Announcement that I am looking for Deputy Speakers. Previous speakers before me, from MJ to Robespierre and then East Isles have had teams of 5-8 deputies helping to run the Office smoothly and promptly. I ended the last term with just 4 – and after Dyl resigned and bootsie got elected to be Minister of Media, I am down to just Bobberino and Tree of Wisdom from the last term.

With regards to training, it would definitely be provided. As taken from my campaign promise, we are working on a version of the Speaker Office procedural guide with graphics, and you all could help us trial the use of the new guides.

A guide with graphics would be an excellent learning tool - I look forward to seeing this come to fruition.

Another Short Announcement

I should have put this out earlier, but @Tree of Wisdom and @Bobberino will officially come back in as Deputies. I am still considering the shape of the final team and will update it again during my opening brief.

Yes, it is the closing address for my October-December 2021 term, and the opening address for the January 2022 term. First of all, I would like to thank everyone who have expressed their support for me at the votes. To those who didn't vote for me, I understand that there may be some who haven't really been happy with our activity levels, as well as some of the way I have been doing things. I will take all these considerations into account going into this term, and hopefully, be able to achieve more targets this term.

During my campaign, I had 2 campaign promises. The first one would be to improve the activity levels of the Speaker's Office. To do so, I started with a PSA asking for applicants to be Deputies, and chose to continue with @Bobberino and @Tree of Wisdom for the new term. After reviewing the applications, I am happy to announce that I will have 2 more members joining us - namely @Lord Dominator and @Treekidistan. This would bring the number of Deputies to 4, which would be enough to sustain day-to-day operations. On the other hand, since more people would be definitely useful in allowing the Speaker's Office to do additional taskings alongside just Citizenship Checks and managing the RA, I would be happy to hear out more applications to be Deputies over the next few months.

With the starting team now fixed, I will be moving on to the activity levels portion. For this term, I am trying to work with something different - that is, a monthly activity review of the Deputies. Instead of a fixed roster, I would be going forward with a plan to ask my deputies to take the initiative in leading the day-to-day activities of the Office. Like I have said before, I believe letting people taking the initiative to do things will be the best way forward for the Office, allowing for certain members to take breaks when their RL life becomes really hectic, and yet operations can continue. As such, starting from 1st February, we will be tracking the various activity of each member (including myself!), looking at 3 main areas of the Office's tasking - processing the citizenship applications of new applicants; checking the citizenship status of current members; as well as opening & counting votes on time. Together with any side taskings that they have completed, we will take all that into account during the review.

The second campaign promise was the implementation of a visual guide. This was mainly done with succession in mind - I didn't want a situation where we had to rely on previous members of the team, or experienced members of the team, in order to teach the new Deputies the way of the office. Given the number of relatively new members to the Office, we will be trialing out such an initiative, and hopefully, we will be able to use this guide to teach future Speakers and Deputies the current processes of the Office.

During the election, my fellow candidate @Tree of Wisdom suggested that the Speaker's Office can play a part in linking the forums with the gameside community. I have thought it through, and while I don't think it is a key priority of the Office, we will be reviewing this entire idea of the Office playing a role in encouraging citizenship. This will be done together with the Gameside Advocates as well as the Ministry of Home Affairs, and we look at ways to encourage citizenship take-up rates, whether it is making citizenship benefits more prominent; improving the citizenship process (which I believe is in the Delegate's mind); or demystifying the citizenship. Given the relatively lower legislation voting rates among our citizens, we will also be considering if gameside pokes would be a thing that the Office can consider going forward.

Well, that is it for now! And cheers to a good term ahead of us

EDIT: I also forgot - I did a little cleanup on the Regional Assembly subforum. Going forward, threads that have been inactive for the past 6 months will be archived, while all threads left in the forum will have a prefix indicating their current status - namely:
Drafting - Bills/Proposals that are currently in discussion and/or drafting phase. This should be the initial phase of all bills/proposals when they enter the floor.
Debate - Debate Thread over a non-legislative topic; or discussion threads about the need for legislation on an issue. Examples include: Overturning a failed VD check; Nominees for Security Council/Election Commission.
In Formal Debate - Legislative proposals currently in Formal Debate
At Vote - Topic is currently at vote
Passed/Failed - Vote has completed, and the proposal has passed/failed.

I intend to push forward with a mid-term report, but I am currently busy with a few things IRL at the moment. That would likely have to be done around next week, in that case. Anyways, I am here to make one announcement. I am happy to announce @Cretox as Deputy Speaker. Cretox has a solid portfolio before their long hiatus, including serving out terms as a Deputy Speaker. Having them will definitely allow us to bring onboard more experience and additional manpower into the office.

If any citizen is interested in becoming a Deputy, please reach out to me via forum messages or Discord Direct Messages.

Happy to rejoin the team, Mr. Speaker!

Cretox:

Happy to rejoin the team, Mr. Speaker!

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Glad to have you aboard

Another announcement - I will be appointing @Dictators to join the office as a Deputy Speaker. Intended to make this announcement with an end-March mid-term review, but I rather get this out of the way since there are some things I wanted to discuss and agree on before publishing the mid-term review. So, congratulations, you may take your oath.

Pursuant to section 6.1 of the Legal Code, @Hulldom has been granted citizenship following a majority vote of the Regional Assembly. The appeal can be found here, the rejection itself here, the original application here, private discussion here, and public discussion here.

This is a really long overdue report. Unfortunately, RL work caught up, and I didn't have the proper opportunity to come down and write this statement. Anyways, here we come.

The Regional Assembly has significantly picekd up a bit more activity in this term. A total of 52 citizens are also considered to be legislatively active. Since January till now, we had 4 legislative bills, and 4 non-legislative motions being voted on. This included the Citizenship Reform Act, which made changes to allow our region to be more flexible in giving citizenship to valuable members of the TNP community, as well as overturning Hulldom's failed admin check, the first time the Citizenship Reform Act is exercised. Currently, we have 2 pieces of legislation on draft & 1 in formal debate. There is also another 3 Election Commissioner appointments, with 2 of them scheduled for a vote over the next few days.

On the citizenship count, there has been a total of 105 approved citizenship applications since the term started. Among them, which also includes some citizens who have lost citizenship, reapplied and continued to be on the namelsit, there is a total of 59 citizens whose tenure of citizenship begun after the term started. The current citizenship count remains at 171 citizens.

With the increased interest in citizenship, as seen by the uptick in number of applicants over the past 2-3 weeks, we have been trying to expand the number of Deputy Speakers in my team. Currently, we have a total of 5 Deputies, and I will take this time to announce my 6th with the appointment of @Nimarya into the fold. With more deputies, it would reduce the workload on each member of the team, and yet we can maintain, or even improve, the processing of RA votes & citizenship applications.

During the start of my term, I made a promise to start working on a "Speaker's Office Guidebook", which is a list of guides to the processes of the Office. While RL has taken a toll in the progress, I believe I would be able to get through some of the more standard guides over the next 2 weeks. This will be done in conjunction with the firming of the procedures following the passing of the Citizenship Reform Act - and once the procedures are done, they will be added to the current Citizenship Check Guides that I have previously written.

First of all, a huge thank you to the people who have placed their faith in me to lead the Speaker's Office once again. For those that didn't vote for me, I take it as an indication of my performance over the past 4 months, and I will do my best to improve the Office's workflows for this term. I will start of by thanking my previous term of Deputies for their work. Some of them joined midway, some of them left for other appointments within the region, but regardless, they have generally played an important role in ensuring that the Office duties continue to be executed in a timely manner.

I will keep this part relatively short. As promised during my campaign, I would be coming up with a plan to train new deputies & members of the Speaker's Office. This will involve a probation program, as well as completing the Office Guides I have promised since my previous term. The details of this plan is still a work-in-progress, and I will release details of the plan in due course. However, I will still be open for applications everyone, experienced or otherwise, to become a Deputy in the Office, so interested applicants please let me know via Private Messages or Discord Message.

For now, after an internal review of the performance of the previous Deputies, I have reached out to a few of them to ask them if they are willing to join me for a second term. Given the movement of some members to positions in the Executive Council, and possibly, the Court bench, this namelist will be tentative for now. At this point, may I welcome @Caius @Lord Dominator and @Vivanco as Deputy Speakers. Please take your oaths.

Congratulations Fregerson!

Mr Speaker, as I have suggested elsewhere, it seems to me that there may be some people currently not masked as citizens or reflected on the rolls but who are citizens. This is due to there not having been rejections of a number of applications on failing admin checks for some months. The law requires the Speaker to accept and reject applications and the Court has held that applications are not rejected on failing a check until the Speaker declares the rejection and that those declarations perform the rejection.

I have went through part of the citizenship applications thread in relation to this issue, covering the period from around 15 September 2021. Below is what appears to me having done so but, of course, feel free to double check.

The following automatically gained citizenship and currently meet the requirements for maintaining citizenship:
@Emerald (applied 15/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 29/11/2021)
@Heloon (applied 03/02/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 17/02/2022)
@Tape (applied 02/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 16/02/2022)
@Oceanica (applied 21/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 05/05/2022)
@Iceina (applied 21/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 05/05/2022)
@AMD (applied 22/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 06/05/2022)
@Delte (applied 28/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 12/05/2022)
@Pinguioris (applied 28/12/2018; automatically gained citizenship on 11/01/2019)

The following automatically gained citizenship but no longer meet the requirements for maintaining citizenship (ie, have no nation in TNP and/or have not posted on the forum or RMB for 30 days):
@Freed Individuals (applied 10/10/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 24/10/2021; no resident nation)
@Nordic Cate (applied 07/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 21/11/2021; no resident nation)
@A-H and Northern Balkans (applied 07/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 21/11/2021; no resident nation)
@Deervand (applied 09/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 23/11/2021; no resident nation)
@Pennsylvania 500 (applied 23/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 07/12/2021; no resident nation)
@EmpireOfTamriel&Atmora (applied 24/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 08/12/2021; no resident nation)
@Stary (applied 27/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 11/12/2021; not posted on forum or RMB for 30 days)
@Larantuka (applied 14/12/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 28/12/2021; no resident nation)
@Dimitre33 (applied 17/01/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 31/12/2021; no resident nation)
@Triropia (applied 01/02/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 15/02/2022; not posted on forum or RMB for 30 days)
@BitterCookie (applied 16/02/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 02/03/2022; no resident nation)
@Mukt (applied 10/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 24/03/2022; no resident nation)
@Juiceinthebag (applied 15/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 29/03/2022; no resident nation)
@Respublika Hotskin (applied 15/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 29/03/2022; no resident nation)
@ArseniiZTV (applied 17/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 31/03/2022; not posted on forum or RMB for 30 days)
@Imperio Safira (applied 18/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 01/04/2022; no resident nation)
@The Kingdom of Haseeb (applied 23/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 06/04/2022; no resident nation)
@sydsquid (applied 28/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 11/04/2022; no resident nation)
@The Orca Islands (applied 01/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 15/04/2022; not posted on forum or RMB for 30 days)
@noodleman (applied 12/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 26/04/2022; no resident nation)

The following automatically gained citizenship and retain a resident nation, however, they do not meet the forum posting requirement and, from onsite information, I have not discerned whether they meet the RMB posting requirement:
@TerraMine (applied 13/11/2021; automatically gained citizenship on 27/11/2021)
@Martistan (applied 12/01/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 26/01/2022)
@Perkaza R. Dani (applied 22/01/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 05/02/2022)
@Emnaria (applied 26/01/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 09/02/2022)
@ULTIMAIUM (applied 22/02/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 08/03/2022)
@Killik360 (applied 16/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 30/03/2022)
@Sannius (applied 20/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 03/04/2022)
@Tasty Bread (applied 23/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 06/04/2022)
@Sameru (applied 28/03/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 11/04/2022)
@khaszae1 (applied 02/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 16/04/2022)
@vxeov (applied 03/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 17/04/2022)
@TriangularS (applied 03/04/2022; automatically gained citizenship on 17/04/2022)

There are a number of others that would have automatically gained citizenship but who had later applications granted and who either now retain or have since lost that citizenship. I do not believe there is any change to their status.

Also the following current applicants await denial:
@Wizer (applied 09/05/2022; will gain citizenship automatically on 23/05/2022)
@Haidar (applied 09/05/2022; will gain citizenship automatically on 23/05/2022)
@Pinetree (applied 12/05/2022; will gain citizenship automatically on 26/05/2022)
@Jinter (applied 13/05/2022; will gain citizenship automatically on 27/05/2022)

Also @The Land Of Broken Dreams failed the admin check but has been granted citizenship.

Note: date formatting is dd/mm/yyyy and are for the post times my timezone BST (UTC+1)

I thank Zyvet for this feedback.

While I have been online for the past few hours, I have been considering what is the right course of action that should be done with regards to the allegations above. I note that a few of the above mentioned cases occurred prior to the time when I was Speaker. I would also like some time to verify on whether "explicit" rejections were made on the mentioned citizens, and also consider what is the appropriate action to resolve the above errors. I note that while there are past court rulings on citizenship and membership of the Regional Assembly that can be applied to this context, not everything seems to be directly applicable in this case. I would also prefer to err on the side of caution in handling these affairs, and therefore, will be conducting a series of corrective actions as follows:

1) I would be reviewing all citizenship applications that were made since I took the oath to become the Speaker of the Regional Assembly, which was on the 2nd of November 2021 UTC time. I note that some of the cases mentioned by Zyvet have been done prior to my time in the position, and those cases will also be reviewed together with the citizenship applications that were made during my time as Speaker. Because of the sheer size of the audit required, I believe I would need a few days to resolve this issue, and I seek the patience of the Assembly on this.
2) I note that in the Review On the Time at which Oaths become binding, it was mentioned that a lack of explicit rejections would mean that members would be bound by the citizenship oath, and therefore, officially become citizen, 14 days after their application. Therefore, the logical solution would be to back date the citizenship to those dates. Given the lack of precedence, however, I would prefer to err on the side of caution, and I would therefore be making a Request for Review to ensure that my actions continue to remain constitutional, legal, and that there isn't a snowball effect to other votes and events that have been occurred over this period.
3) Apart from the Review as mentioned in the previous point, I would like to also submit a series of Reviews which I believe would help in the resolution of this unusual case. These Reviews would be structured to allow me to understand what are some corrective actions which I am able to make with regards to this issue. In the event of an unsatisfactory response from this series of reviews, I would also take the initiative to counter propose to this Assembly, a series of legislation which would allow me to make these corrections more easily.
4) With regards to why such a situation might have happened, we have realised that the requirements what constitutes an "explicit rejection" was never mentioned in my training as a Deputy Speaker, nor when I trained newer Deputy Speakers once I took on the role of a Speaker. The Speaker's Office will be making sure to place emphasis on the need to make "explicit rejection" posts for future training of Deputies.

I would like to take this time to apologise to the mentioned individuals for any inconvenience caused because of this issue, and thank everyone for their patience while I expedite the resolution of this mess.

Lord Dominator:

The nation of @Dar Es Saalam has been banned from the forum/region and they have lost citizenship (duh).

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Have they, Mr Speaker?

Ruling on Regional Officer Banning during NationStates Events:

The court notes, however, that for purposes of losing citizenship, ejections do not constitute leaving the region, since the ejected nation was forcibly removed and took no action to leave. Thus, under the law as it currently stands, ejected citizens would remain citizens until they ceased to exist, returned the region and then departed of their own volition, or failed to post on the forum for over 30 consecutive days.

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Zyvetskistaahn:

Have they, Mr Speaker?

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Well apparently not, because being banned permanently by admin isn’t enough, and I didn’t realize that. Citizenship re-added, so we can wait out the 30 useless days in which they can’t post on anything anyways.

I realise I didn't give a proper update on myself and the progress of what I expressed a few days ago. So while my RL work is supposed to be quite relaxed, I was activated around 96 hours ago due to a major operational incident in a working partner, and that has resulted in me being stuck on those operations. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that I literally have no ability to access the Internet while at my operations centre, and I spent long hours there in order to resolve the issue. Given the long ops shift, it has definitely affected my work as a Speaker. And also stopped me from posting my brief for the R4R that I really wanted to commit to. Thankfully, I just wrapped up my duties there, so now I can be back to my usual cycle. I fully expect to release my full audit excel sheet by Saturday midday in American times, and to be open to further discussions about the way going forward.

With regards to citizenship checks, there has been comments that the citizenship checks ain't moving as quickly as before. We agreed as an Office that we will push our Speaker's Checks to be last on the peking order, so we can make the judgement on whether an applicant should be accepted as a citizen or rejected due to failing a check in the same post. In the meantime, however, we are still keeping an eye on Regional Assembly & the Citizenship Application.

EDIT: I realised I type my due date wrongly. I meant Saturday midday, I was planning to spend some time tidying it off work during my Saturday, which will end with Saturday midday in American time = Saturday night on my time.

May I ask the Speaker for an update on this? There are a lot of people who are still in limbo because of these recent revelations and I have to believe they could have been put at ease by now.

In case of Fregerson not coming with said audit, as Deputy Speaker I would be inclined to grant the citizenship to those who gained it automatically and to those who still have a resident nation. I understand that those who don't have a resident nation should be given the citizenship and then removed since they don't have a resident nation (See Section 6.2.18 of the Legal Code).

I believe this would be unnecesary movements, but since we have to move as such, they would be declared citizens only to be taken away such fact from said legal point.

Those who haven't posted in the last 30 days will be given the 30 days from the point where their citizenships become "active" to say it in a way that could be understood.

I understand that Fregerson may be busy and RL comes first. That is why I propose such solution as Deputy Speaker.

Vivanco:

In case of Fregerson not coming with said audit, as Deputy Speaker I would be inclined to grant the citizenship to those who gained it automatically and to those who still have a resident nation. I understand that those who don't have a resident nation should be given the citizenship and then removed since they don't have a resident nation (See Section 6.2.18 of the Legal Code).

I believe this would be unnecesary movements, but since we have to move as such, they would be declared citizens only to be taken away such fact from said legal point.

Those who haven't posted in the last 30 days will be given the 30 days from the point where their citizenships become "active" to say it in a way that could be understood.

I understand that Fregerson may be busy and RL comes first. That is why I propose such solution as Deputy Speaker.

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That sounds not only reasonable, but would appear to be in my view the only correct course of action for the Speaker's office to take. Would have been better if it had happened 10 days ago, but the next best time is right now.

The situation has been normalised as best of my abilities. They have been accepted citizenship, and those who still don't have a nation in TNP have been promptly taken away their citizenship.

Vivanco:

The situation has been normalised as best of my abilities. They have been accepted citizenship, and those who still don't have a nation in TNP have been promptly taken away their citizenship.

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In light of this, should we expect any further action from the Speaker, especially regarding the hinted r4rs? It has been a week since he last gave any kind of response on this.

Pallaith:

In light of this, should we expect any further action from the Speaker, especially regarding the hinted r4rs? It has been a week since he last gave any kind of response on this.

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The Speaker does have something planned as far as I know, but I can't answer for them as to what it is.

Will the Speaker ever have a response to my query?

@Fregerson

Pallaith:

In light of this, should we expect any further action from the Speaker, especially regarding the hinted r4rs? It has been a week since he last gave any kind of response on this.

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And no, I do not expect to do another R4R unless the one I submitted turns out in the wrong way.

To be honest with you, I saw no purpose in responding to this query since I was already drafting a message. I didn't think a half-baked answer is going to satisfy neither you nor any citizens alike, and I didn't see how a day more made any difference if the difference in the type of response was much more different. Guess I was wrong. But that is reserved for my response in the recall thread.

Fregerson:

And no, I do not expect to do another R4R unless the one I submitted turns out in the wrong way.

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What is the reasoning behind this reversal of the decision to file R4Rs, especially since the R4R that was actually filed didn't relate to the issue that was encountered?

Gorundu:

What is the reasoning behind this reversal of the decision to file R4Rs, especially since the R4R that was actually filed didn't relate to the issue that was encountered?

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I guess thinking through and looking at the result of the recent R4R, it seems that I was overthinking the entire process. And my original R4Rs planned wouldn't exactly have solved the issue either - it was either we change the laws or I resolve it using present means.

I will update that an audit on the forum-side citizenship list was done to match the list on the official citizenship registry. Together with the changes made with regards to the resolution of Zyvet's post, both lists now properly matches.

Fregerson:

I will update that an audit on the forum-side citizenship list was done to match the list on the official citizenship registry. Together with the changes made with regards to the resolution of Zyvet's post, both lists now properly matches.

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What changes were made aside from any that were due to the citizenship non-rejection issue?

Gorundu:

What changes were made aside from any that were due to the citizenship non-rejection issue?

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Dar Es Saalam's status on forumside and on the excel sheet wasn't really matching - in fact they were removed from the citizenship roll forum side and on the excel sheet. I have reinstated them back, and sent out a reminder to my 2 deputies not to remove them again till the 30 day posting criteria wasn't met.
Apart from that, the changes were made due to the confusion surrounding the citizenship non-rejection issue.

This is an official announcement with regards to 2 technical issues faced on citizenship.

1) During a routine check, our Deputy @Vivanco noticed that the Forum Activity Scripts have failed to work as required. This is a script used by the Office that determines if a user has posted on the forums over the past 30 days. As such, on the Citizenry excel sheet, it would be reflected as "Indeterminate". The admins have been updated via a newly created forum-side DM group, and they will be looking at this issue. In the meantime, the Office will rely on manual checks to ensure the check for the 30 day criteria are continued accordance to law.
2) On Discord, the nation masking bot continues to be down. Given that there is no quick fix in the short run, the Office will now be aiming to maintain a list of Discord Tags of every current citizen. If you have a Discord Tag and is currently on the TNP Discord, we encourage you to put the Discord Tag on your forum profile post. If you are missing the citizen tag, please post in masking request with your nation name and/or your citizenship accepted post and we will review it accordingly. The office will also aim to establish a procedure, together with the discord moderators, to manage discord maskings.

Update - Point 1 has since self-resolved.

Because the matters of the Office needs to continue working regardless what is happening to the Speaker, I have decided to make appointments for Deputies. Having spoken to two former Deputies, who have indicated they are now more available to return to the Office to serve, I will appoint @Treekidistan and @Bobberino as Deputy Speaker.

If there is any interest from any citizen in learning the ropes, please approach any member of the Office to apply for the position of a Deputy. Thank you!

For these last few weeks, I have done my best for the office, and I feel like these actions have not been seen in their proper light, or made less of.

For my potential mistake with @Advancia-Sizzletown 's citizenship, after this post, I have reached my limit in the office.

I have tried hard to keep this office afloat, but if I can't have a simple sense of reward, I can't go on.

I apologice to the Speaker and the rest of the Office, and I hope they can keep going foward.

I hereby, resign as Deputy Speaker.

This Assembly has, with the conclusion of the vote, decided that it is in their best interests to recall me as Speaker of the Assembly. I know that given the margin, had I voted Nay on the motion, I might have been able to stop my own recall, however, I decided against it, leaving my hands to this august Assembly to decide.

I would like to provide my sincerest thanks to the 16 people who voted Nay to my recall - for whatever reasons you may have voted as such, I take it you have some level of faith in giving me a second chance to finish out the term before deciding what we should be the correct process going forward. I would also like to thank the Deputies, past and present, who have continued to put faith in me to carry on, providing me some advice, and also continuing to ensure the Office's work is continued in spite of the circumstances. With that in mind, I have also greatly considered to name @Caius as Acting Speaker, if it is within my powers to do so currently. I believe that this Assembly and the remaining members of the Office will agree with me that Caius has done a great work thus far, and deserves to be Acting Speaker. I will leave it to them to decide whether they want to run for the position in the Special.

If I may add a learning point from my recall, it is that this community has shown that it is not afraid to press the recall button to government officials when they aren't as active as they should, or not following the high standards that they have put in place for the office. If that is indeed the case, than I hope the same standards will continue to be applied on all our government officials, and that my case will serve as a warning for all that will take up office - if the checkboxes are all ticked, then the Assembly is not afraid, fortunately or unfortunately, of recalling them.

One thing I would like to maintain, even till this day and time, is that I was never in denial of the problems that I was facing, despite what some people may have presumed to be. If these problems were just "obstacles" in my way of keeping power, as what Zyvet have mentioned in their post, then I wouldn't have put in so much effort to check every single application during my time and validate - the shortest and simplest way out was to just check whatever Zyvet pointed out, and then made a decision from those. That was a job for a few hours, not a few days. Even now, even if I knew I would have an emergency come up to stop me from completing a full check as promptly as I should have, I would still have promised what I have promised - that is just simply an answer to my values. How I choose to hands off my deputies as much as possible provided they were doing work, trying to settle issues behind closed doors rather than let them blow up, and, when that fails, thinking of ways in which I can correct my Deputies' technical problems in edge cases without just deciding to blatantly remove them.

I would put it up front that for now, this won't be the end of my involvement with elected offices. The last recall of this Assembly was done on an Security Council member who was basically slacking off and not deserving of their position. In my case, I will continue to put in my work outside of the Speaker's Office, and continue to do whatever I commit to to the best of my abilities. And I don't wish to rule out making a return to this Office when I have a better platform to make up for the mistakes of the past.

Signing off,
Fregerson

Caius:

@Philly Macaroni and @the president of vananatu have failed to post on the forum or RMB for 30 days and therefore have lost citizenship.

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Have they lost residency? If not, then they still ought to be masked as residents.

Pathoal:

Have they lost residency? If not, then they still ought to be masked as residents.

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Yes, that was a mistake on my part, they have been masked as residents.

Ok so this was initially going to be continuing the corporate theme but I got way too into it and then realised I was and started to hate that person a lot. I’m the Speaker again, at least until September. Here’s my team:

Returning for my tenure will be @Caius, @Bobberino and @Treekidistan from last term. I offered to reappoint all previous deputies, but to those leaving, I offer only the best of wishes. I will also be, upon the end of Judicial elections, appointing @Sil Dorsett as a deputy, after they expressed a wish to learn the job. I will always welcome enthusiastic and curious people asking to be deputies and I encourage more people to do so.

I spoke about the need for a Deputy Speaker who would be around mainly or solely to provide advice and knowledge on legal issues and the powers of the office and the law around it. I’m delighted to be able to announce that both @Owenstacey and @Zyvetskistaahn are joining the office to serve in that regard.

You’ve met the team, now here’s what we’re going to do:

• I will immediately begin an audit of the sheet and the joinable groups, to be completed by Friday. On Friday I will post the results of the audit.
• Also on Friday, a post containing a schedule of which Deputy (or myself) is primarily responsible for processing checks on that day. That schedule will be updated periodically throughout the term as we progress and re-assess.
• I will review the guides that were worked upon during the previous term. Hopefully by the start of next week I will have an idea of how and when they will be posted publicly.
• By the end of July I will have made a decision on whether the Regional Assembly Rules, primarily to address the procedure around Acting Speakers and Speaker succession but also for other issues.
• I’ll be speaking with each deputy on their understanding of how to do the busy work of the role and from whenever that process finishes (I don’t see it lasting longer than the weekend) we’ll be ready to go.
• I’ll be appointing my designated acting speaker by the end of tomorrow.

And with that, I think we’re ready to go. Remember our corporate slogan guys - “Becky”

Becky!