Cosmic for Speaker!

Hello everyone! I’m extremely pleased to announce my candidacy for Speaker!

For those of you who don’t know me by now, my name is Cosmc. I’ve been a citizen of the North Pacific for nearly a year now, and in that time, I’ve done quite a bit. Formerly, I served as the Minister of Defense under Delegate Picairn, and currently, throughout Chipoli’s delegacy, I’ve served as NPA Colonel, Member of NPA High Command, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Deputy Speaker. Now, that's all great, but how did I get here?

I first joined The North Pacific in early April of last year, then gained citizenship a month later, in early May. Throughout my first four months in TNP executive, I primarily served in the Ministry of Defense, rising through the ranks of the NPA rapidly until I was promoted to warrant officer just three months after enlisting, and finally promoted to full officer at the conclusion of Simone’s Delegacy. Following this, and seeing my enthusiasm for R/D, Picairn asked me to serve has his Minister of Defense, a position that I happily accepted and proceeded to serve as MoD throughout Picairn’s Delegacy, leading the NPA through the first Wellspring operation and restarting a chain of Fash Bash operations with some of our allies to try to increase activity. Following my term, however, I had primarily served exclusively in the MoD for eight months, and I wanted a change of pace, so I decided to explore some of my other options. One of these paths was joining the Speaker’s Office as a Deputy, a job I have enjoyed greatly throughout this term. During Matzerati’s speakership last term, I was appointed acting Speaker twice, where I was able to ensure that everything was running on time (with the most recent time I was acting speaker getting a lot more work than the first). Therefore, when Matzerati announced that they weren’t running for Speaker this term, I thought, why not throw my hat into the ring?

But that's enough about me: what are my plans for the office if I was elected? Well, here are my promises:

• Continuing to refine and work on the Speaker’s Guides - most of the guides are finished aside from a couple outstanding ones. I would make sure to finally get the Speaker Guides wrapped up, as well as refine some of the older ones, as they can be a little harder to follow (spoken from experience, as I had to use them a lot last term)
• Keeping up with demand - In my opinion, the Speaker’s office has done a very good job in keeping up with even the busiest times in the Regional Assembly. This is largely due to the hard work of everyone in the office. Should I be elected, I pledge to keep everything running smoothly and on time.
• Rejuvenating the Speaker’s Office - On this note, the Speaker’s Office has been a tad understaffed lately, with there only being two Deputy Speakers along with Matzerati during the end of the last term. Though the office has been running on time, this is admittedly a large workload for everyone in the office, so, should I be elected, I would like to recruit a few more deputies to help out, no experience needed!
• Continuing the RA Digest - this one is basically what it sounds like, I would like to keep the RA Digest going every other week, as I think it is a great way for citizens and noncitizens alike to see what's happening within our Regional Assembly.
• Guides for citizens - This is an idea I’ve thought of for a while now, but something I’ve been noticing is that, large, the same authors come up for every new bill introduced to the RA. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that it would be good to make the proposal of changes to our legal code more transparent and easier. My proposal would be to make guides, similar to the Speaker’s Guides, that inform members of the RA how to draft laws as well as educate them on the legal code more generally, which, as we all know, is a bit dense.

If you have any questions or just would like to get to know me better, don’t be afraid to message in this thread, or PM directly, I’m always happy to talk!

I really appreciate everyone who has read this platform all the way through, and remember to vote Cosmic for Speaker!

Full support!

Ever since I appointed Cosmic as Deputy Speaker, he showed from the start of the term that he was of great value. Cosmic has learned the ins and outs of the Speaker’s Office very quickly. With me currently still on a leave, he is keeping a good track on the large amount of votes that are currently in front of the Regional Assembly, in contrast with the rather quiet term we went though in terms of RA activity. Therefore I am fully confident Cosmic wil be the perfect fit for the office of Speaker.
I do however have a few questions:

• You mention that you are planning to refine and work on the Speaker’s guides. While the refining part seems normal to me (some guides are indeed 2 years old), what additions do you see as necessary to view the Guides as completed?
• Isn’t there already a guide on how the process of writing a bill works (this one)? If you are aiming to create a guide on how to come up with a proposed change to the law, what do you want to see in your proposed guide?
• When I took over the Office after the resignation of my predecessor, the reintroduction of a schedule for the Deputies was seen as a good tool to make sure every Deputy does a part of the work. Do you intend to continue using this kind of scheduling? And do you want some changes to it?
• How many Deputy Speakers do you aim to appoint?

Good luck with the election!

Petronellania:

Full support!

Click to expand...

Thanks Petro!

Matzerati:

Ever since I appointed Cosmic as Deputy Speaker, he showed from the start of the term that he was of great value. Cosmic has learned the ins and outs of the Speaker’s Office very quickly. With me currently still on a leave, he is keeping a good track on the large amount of votes that are currently in front of the Regional Assembly, in contrast with the rather quiet term we went though in terms of RA activity. Therefore I am fully confident Cosmic wil be the perfect fit for the office of Speaker.
I do however have a few questions:

• You mention that you are planning to refine and work on the Speaker’s guides. While the refining part seems normal to me (some guides are indeed 2 years old), what additions do you see as necessary to view the Guides as completed?
• Isn’t there already a guide on how the process of writing a bill works (this one)? If you are aiming to create a guide on how to come up with a proposed change to the law, what do you want to see in your proposed guide?
• When I took over the Office after the resignation of my predecessor, the reintroduction of a schedule for the Deputies was seen as a good tool to make sure every Deputy does a part of the work. Do you intend to continue using this kind of scheduling? And do you want some changes to it?
• How many Deputy Speakers do you aim to appoint?

Good luck with the election!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words and questions Matz!

1. I think that the guides cover all of the major topics right now, but even in the guide itself it notes how the guides for more niche things like the appointment of prosecutors or conducting an audit are unfinished. Additionally, I was thinking about adding some more guidelines for scheduling the length of votes and shortening debate times to help out new deputies in making these decision, which could be helpful. Otherwise, in addition to refining a couple, some of the templates for the posting threads (in particular the non-legislative one) have a couple wording choices that have since been changed, so I would also change the templates to reflect this.
2. I think that this guide could be quite useful, but its worth noting that its quite short, quite old, and quite general. It gives a good overview, buty there are many of intricacies of the RA that aren't reflected in this guide. I think that we could benefit from an update that is more specific. Regardless, I think that it would also be beneficial to summarize and inform citizens on the legal code.
3. Yes! I definitely intend to continue using a schedule. I really appreciated that I had clear times when I was scheduled to be doing the work. Part of the issue right now is that there are only three people in the Speaker's office, which means that we all basically have to be keeping up with demand right now. I think that if we got a couple new deputies I would love to use the schedule again though, because, after all, it was through our schedule's clear expectations, that I was able to learn all of the different parts of the RA. One change that I've thought about is having different people do different kinds of the work on certain days, which would only be useful until we got more people in the Speaker's office, but it could be similar to how Petro and I divided up work recently while you were away. I primarily took the votes and Petro primarily took the citizenship applications. While I definitely don't think this would be a good long term strategy (especially if we want to be training new deputies), I think that on certain days specific people could handle the citizenship apps while the rest handle votes and so on. I'm kinda just spit balling here, I'm not sure if it would work, but its something I've thought about.
4. I think around 4 would be a good number as long as everyone is enthusiastic and engaged. At the beginning of the term I think we had around 5 (?) and that allowed us to split up the work quite effectively. Therefore, I would aim for around 4, since I think that if we had everyone super engaged, 5 people in the Speaker's Office would be more than enough.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

While I was a bit miffed this term with your performance as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, this is a solid campaign. Unless another candidate suddenly jumps out with a banger campaign that shatters this, I will probably be voting for you in this election. Glad to see you've found something that suits you!

Halsoni:

While I was a bit miffed this term with your performance as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, this is a solid campaign. Unless another candidate suddenly jumps out with a banger campaign that shatters this, I will probably be voting for you in this election. Glad to see you've found something that suits you!

Click to expand...

I’m sorry that you didn’t appreciate my performance as FA Deputy, Ruben, but I appreciate your support!