Colonies And Territories Part II: Overcoming the Veto

[Venico]

So my friends, we passed a bill along to our Pharaoh and he has vetoed it. I will admit that this is a flawed bill as it stands and would like to amend it. But we have a few options here we can consider.

1) Do we want to overcome this veto? For me this is an easy decision as it's a route I saw Osiris go down and would like to stay on that path. Imperialism is something this Deshret should set more in stone rather than let the Pharaoh decide it at a whim.

2) Amend now, or later? So here's my main dilemma. If we go back and rework the bill now, we have to run the gauntlet of passing a bill (which we know will get vetoed) and wasting an extra week only to end up back here. What I would like to do is overcome the veto then pass an amendment to strengthen this bill and give it teeth. Namely adding a definition of the word Colony, and passing a Criminal Codex amendment making it a severe crime to steal a colony from Osiris.

Please leave comments on what you would like to do. And if there is something that would help the bill pass in your mind, or you would like to see added, comment down below.

What're your thoughts Deshret?

VeniEdit: So I decided to type up the amendment now for you guys to see which we could push to vote as we try to over ride the veto. So here it is.

Spoiler

Colonies and Territories Act Section 1: Colonial Status

1) A colony region shall be defined as any region that has been refounded by the military of Osiris or any region that has requested colonial status, was accepted by a majority Deshret vote and approved by the Pharaoh.

2) The Pharaoh may, with Deshret approval, revoke the colonial status, as outlined in this act, of any region.

Section 2: Government

1) Should a region be granted colonial status, its extant government shall be respected by the Osiris Fraternal Order (OFO).

2) Where a region has no extant government, or in the case of a region that has been refounded by the military of the OFO, a Governor shall be appointed by the Pharaoh.

3) Governors shall be tasked with managing the colony and maintaining the founder nation, if one exists, for the colony region.

4) Governors must be members of the Deshret in good standing.

5) Should any governor resign his position, cease to exist, or fail to maintain Deshret membership they shall be responsible for naming a successor. If no successor is named within five days of such an event the Pharaoh shall name a successor.

6) The Deshret shall be responsible for approving any Governor's successor. Should the Deshret fail to approve a named successor, the former governor will have another five days to name another.

7) The password of a colony's founder account, if one exists, may only be changed with approval from the Pharaoh.

Section 3: Governor-General

1) The Pharaoh shall appoint, with approval from the Deshret, a Governor-General, who shall be tasked with maintaining information related to each colony region.

2) The Governor-General shall, following any Pharaoh election, be tasked with providing the Pharaoh and Deshret with a list of all colony regions and will provide the Deshret with a summary of the state of each colony under this act.

3) The Governor-General shall maintain a record of the password to each colony region founder account.

4) The Governor-General shall serve until resignation or until a recall is requested by the Pharaoh and approved by the Deshret.

5) Should any colony's founder account password change, the Governor-General shall be notified in order to update his records.

Section 4: Rights and Responsibilities

1) A colony region must maintain that it is an ally of Osiris in the World Factbook Entry.

2) A colony region must maintain ingame embassies with Osiris, and should it have an offsite forum, a forum embassy with Osiris.

3) In the event of any legitimate threat to a colony region, the OFO shall be tasked with defending and preserving said colony region.

Section 5: Errata

1) The original Colonies and Territories Act is repealed.

2) Should this bill ultimately pass into law, Section 5 of this bill shall be struck from the public record.

[Common-Sense Politics]

I have no ambition to pursue this version of the legislation given that I view its premise to be flawed.

[Venico]

I have no ambition to pursue this version of the legislation given that I view its premise to be flawed.

I understand and thank you for your comment CSP.

[Durkadurkiranistan II]

I support the general thrust of the resolution, and would like to overcome the veto.

[Vaculatestar]

I would like to pursue overturning the veto as well and don't see any other changes this bill needs currently.

[Venico]

Ok, so I changed the Pharaoh to the Root Admin in Section 1, to avoid the Nation Sharing issue and since Koth said he'd be willing to take on that responsibility. Hope this cleans up the draft a bit.

If people would like to change it back to Pharaoh, let me know. But I think that wouldn't be the wisest since Pharaoh is constantly changing position.

[Cormac]

In the interest of saving time, I am notifying the Deshret in advance that I will veto this amendment in its current form, for the following reasons:

1. Upon further reflection, I believe it inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional to assign any role that properly belongs to the Government of the Osiris Fraternal Order to the unelected, out-of-character, nongovernmental forum root administrator.

2. More fundamentally, an amendment to the Colonies and Territories Act represents a renewed opportunity to improve a badly flawed piece of legislation that I still hope will not become law. Unfortunately, this amendment does nothing to correct the superabundance of power the Act grants to colonial governors, which may also be unconstitutional by infringing upon constitutional prerogatives of the Pharaoh to organize the executive branch of government and exercise chief command over the military.

Any amendment to the Colonies and Territories Act that fails to correct this serious, potentially unconstitutional problem will meet with a veto regardless of the amendment's content, and require the higher threshold necessary to override a veto. The Deshret can willfully pass bad legislation and neglect opportunities to fix that legislation if it wishes, but the Office of the Pharaoh will not cooperate in this institution's abdication of its responsibilities during my term in office. I maintain that, should the Colonies and Territories Act become law, the best way to fix it is to repeal it, and that is legislation I would happily sign.

[Venico]

I have to disagree with you on whether or not those points are unconstitutional. We've danced the danced about governor power so I'll let that rest as I've more than addressed it in multiple posts on the original thread.

1) The reasoning behind the Pharaoh to Root administrator change is in the worst case scenario, a lot less people are touching a nation. What if a Pharaoh is elected who doesn't want the responsibility/risk of nation sharing? Should he not be elected because of that? Koth already said he was willing to and the Root Administrator is the only job here that doesn't change every few months. Nor does this take power away from the Pharaoh. This job is not about maintaining the region (that's covered in other clauses). It's about keeping the founder to a region alive.

2) The Pharaoh has the ability to relegate his responsibilities to other positions of command. Like a Scribe, or an ISRA officer. By making someone a Governor of a territory, you are relegating the responsibilities as a Pharaoh you have to the colony (which constitutionally there are none) to the Governor.

Any further discussion of constitutionality I think should be brought to the Kenbet.

[Venico]

Ok so there are two things I'd like the Deshret to discuss about possibly adding to the amendment.

1) Seeing how Cormac has responded to the root administrator position, I shall seek a compromise here. We create a Governor-General position who is not regularly changed much like the Pschent who would be responsible for logging into founder nations in case of Governor inactivity. Things to discuss would be recallability? Deshret confirmation? I want this position to be as permanent as possible because we want the least amount of people touching the nation. There are already two guaranteed, the person who nabs the refound and the Governor. Three if this Governor-General has to log on. More if there are successors. So what we need is a position that is relatively stable and doesn't change. That's why I chose the Root account, but if we can seek a compromise here, I'm for it.

2) Responsibilities of Osiris to the colony. What I'm thinking here are provisions for defense and possibly a required embassy? I want the Colonial status to be enticing. To possibly end up with regions WANTING to be a colony and approaching our Pharaoh about it. Encouraged culture events? Give me your thoughts.

[Cormac]

2) The Pharaoh has the ability to relegate his responsibilities to other positions of command. Like a Scribe, or an ISRA officer. By making someone a Governor of a territory, you are relegating the responsibilities as a Pharaoh you have to the colony (which constitutionally there are none) to the Governor.

Any further discussion of constitutionality I think should be brought to the Kenbet.

In all other cases -- a Scribe, ISRA Joint Commander, etc. -- the Pharaoh chooses the official's replacement when that official resigns or is removed from office. In the case of colonial governors, the governor chooses their own successor. The Pharaoh has no input beyond the initial appointment, which means that after a governor is appointed the Pharaoh loses all executive control over colonies. That isn't consistent with the State Code.

Should the Act actually become law, discussion of constitutionality will be moved to the Pschent. Until then, I don't think it's inappropriate to ask the Deshret to consider the constitutionality of legislation before they make it law, to avoid judicial action.