Post

Podria wrote:

I completely understand this, Kava. You do have quite the experience in The Leftist Assembly and in the General Assembly, I absolutely recognise that you have quite a good amount of experience in the General Assembly, I do however fear that 27 months, many of which were in an old and outmoded system may leave you entrenched and inflexible in your legislation and leadership.

I don't claim to have run the best GA of the new system. Superlatives and decisive ranking of such a matter is impossible and narrow-minded. Kava, you ran the General Assembly which passed the most bills, and saw the region over through an entire governmental overhaul. I recognise and appreciate that you have great experience in our region. I did, however, run the most stable General Assembly since the new system.

The largest issue, in my opinion, with the 17th General Assembly was that we ran out of legislation, and I think that issue is related to the fact that most of our GA had served multiple terms in government, and weren't able to see our laws and our region in a new light. The new GA is chock full of new faces with new ideas and new views. I am simply running in this by-election to keep the region moving forward.

At the moment, there are three people running, all of which have either served on the General Assembly or have run and failed the confirmation vote. Should we see some new faces, I will seriously consider dropping, as I think we already have quite the lineup of experienced legislators, and also quite the lineup of fresh legislators. I am running to ensure that we have a well educated and trained Speaker as well as an open and flexible GA.

Best of luck to you, Kava. I truly think that the General Assembly will be amazing no matter who wins.

Unity in Diversity!

This first paragraph is a continuation of a trend that I've seen more and more recently, and that is the association of older members of the region with inflexibility and the status quo. I don't think that any reasonable assessment of the careers of people like myself, and others that have been directly and indirectly targeted by this, would bring about that conclusion. You are talking about people that made their name here as legislative reformers, and that have continued to innovate throughout their time serving this region. As you say, I have spent significant time in the GA, in many different forms, and I can say with confidence what has and hasn't worked. In a GA that is stacked with new faces, that understanding is very useful in helping these new legislators avoid our region's past mistakes. I think that this undervaluing of experience is ultimately a political device, and not only does it do a disservice to those that have dedicated themselves to the constant improvement of this community over the years, but it is also a detriment to TLA as a whole should it be allowed to seep into the electoral consciousness, which I fear it already may have to some extent. I hope to be proven wrong on that count.

But enough of my "yelling at clouds", as I know some would put it.

The GA's biggest problem right now is a crisis of participation, and simply adding another new face isn't going to solve it. This GA has a majority of first-time MGAs, what we need to focus on in this by-election is solving a serious problem with legislative proposals. I will be posting a short set of proposals before the vote commences to demonstrate how I intend to improve interest and participation in the GA going forward.

EDIT: Also, stability by the indicators that you use is not a good way of evaluating anything, to be honest. Firstly, Speakers do not control MGAs, and if one drops off of the face of the earth, the Speaker is not responsible for that. Secondly, I would much rather have a largely active GA that replaced inactive MGAs with new ones over a GA with barely enough activity for everyone to avoid VoNCs, and minimal legislating.