Tropica

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http://forum.particracy.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7615

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Tropica Today

Federal Government formally re-established - New constitution being drafted, elections scheduled for June 5623

Nikutabi - November 5621 - As a new day dawns on Tropica’s hundreds of islands, as does a new era. Several decades of anarchy have ended and a unity government of sorts has been formed out of the leaders of the 35 regions. This temporary Government has chosen to set a preliminary date for the election of the newly reestablished National Assembly for June 5623 at the earliest, to allow political parties be formed and basic decisions to be made regarding the conduct of the election. It was also announced that a referendum on the adoption of a newly-written constitution would take place simultaneously with this election. It is expected that this council of 35 regional leaders will form the upper house of a bicameral Tropican Parliament under the proposed constitution. 

Some other major decisions that have been made by this unity government include:

• The restructuring of regional governments into 35 unicameral councils that have limited powers
  
• The re-establishment of a public-funded national broadcaster, the Tropican Broadcasting Network, that will initially broadcast news and government-funded public service announcements before expanding into other fields once the nation gets back on it’s feet.
  

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Tropica Today

Tropican Constitution Drafting - Outlines released by National Council

Nikutabi - October 5622 - Today, after a meeting in Nikutabi, the Tropican National Council has announced a formal outline of the country’s new constitution, alongside information about the electoral process for the election currently scheduled for mid-5623.

The Council’s proposal has opted for a constitution that removes the now untraceable Monarchy’s power, and replaces it with a President elected for a 5 year term by a three-fifths majority of the Lower House, which can be lowered to a plurality after 5 ballots. The President will have the same limited powers of the Monarchy, where they will have the power to appoint the Prime Minister, formally sign bills passed by both houses into law, and appoint Judges to the Federal Judiciary on advice of the Prime Minister. 

The Legislative Branch has also been reformed in structure. The National Assembly will be elected by the people for 5 year terms, and the Prime Minister will be the leader of the group with a majority of seats, or, in cases where a majority is unable to be formed, the largest group in the Assembly. Then, the current National Council will become an indirectly-elected upper house, consisting of a representative of each of the 35 regions, elected for 5 year terms by each respective regional legislature, rather than consisting of the regional leaders themselves. The council will not have power to take down a government in the Assembly, either by a no-confidence motion or blocking supply, but can amend supply and other bills as it wishes. 

Other inclusions in the constitution include a strong federal structure, creating a national forum of the President, Prime Minister and regional leaders that will meet at least twice a year, a judicial branch completely independent from the legislative and executive branches and a bill of rights.

Also today, the Council released details of the first election for the new National Assembly. Although the voting system hasn’t been decided, it is between either First Past the Post with some supplementary seats allocated using votes that didn’t elect a constituency MNA, or a region-based form of Parallel Voting with no at-large component or threshold, and pure PR in regions with under 4 seats. The election will be conducted by the Tropican Electoral Commission, an independent entity that cannot be influenced by the Executive. The National Assembly will initially consist of 400 MNAs (300 Constituency and 100 compensatory in the FPTP-Supplementary system, or ‘as close as possible to’ 200 Constituency and 200 List seats under the parallel voting proposal).

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Tropica Today
National Council announces Electoral System for June elections

Nikutabi - March 5623 (backdated) - With just three months until the first General Election since Tropica’s federal government reformed and the introduction of the new constitution will be voted on, the National Council has announced that the FPTP-Supplementary system will be the voting system that the election will be conducted under, defeating the Region-based Parallel Voting system 20-15 in a vote of all 35 regional leaders present. 

The system, which has been modified slightly from its original form, will feature 400 MNAs elected from two tiers. The 250 constituency MNAs elected by First Past the Post, and 150 ‘Supplementary’ MNAs elected by an additional member system utilising the wasted votes for that party in the FPTP constituencies. This is a change from the 300:100 split suggested in the initial proposal. The 250 constituencies have been distributed between the 35 regions based on population, with the largest regions receiving 20 to 26 constituencies, and the smallest just getting 1 or 2. Nationally, an average of 117,865 electors will be in one electorate. 

Which candidates will fill the supplementary seats received by a party will be decided by first ranking all losing constituency candidates in that party by margin from the victor, and then ranking an ‘emergency list’ after them in case a party wins more top-ups than constituencies they lost in. 

Also today, the Tropican Electoral Commission confirmed that 10 parties will be registered to contest the election. The favourites are the Tropican Labour Party (unrelated to the former party of the same name) and the Conservative Party of Tropica, which are expected to fill the positions of the major centre-left and centre-right parties. The other parties contesting are the Green Party, the centrist Democrats, the hard-right Tropican National Party (also unrelated to the former party of the same name), parties representing Mātou, Teoan, Kanakan and Raktavan issues, as well as the far-right Democratic Alliance. Polling conducted before the confirmation of the parties registered suggests that Labour would poll 35%, the Conservatives 33%, Green 7%, Democrats 5%, TNP 4%, and Pati Mātou 4%, with the remaining parties all under 4%. 

With the campaign due to kick off within weeks, these parties will conduct leadership elections to decide their leaders and Prime Ministerial candidates.

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Tropica Today

Parties elect federal Leaders ahead of June's Election

Nikutabi - April 5623 (backdated) - With Tropica’s first election campaign since the reestablishment of the Federal Government about to get underway, the major parties have named their candidates for the top job if they manage to scrape together a majority in the National Assembly. Labour has chosen the current Mayor of Nikutabi, William Tama, a member of its progressive faction, as its PM candidate and Parliamentary leader when the actual session of the Parliament starts. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have managed a coup, poaching extremely popular Chief Minister of Takutai Tonga, Andrew Rangi from Pati Mātou to be their leader. Rangi, a staunch proponent of traditional conservative values and a society that’s entirely merit-based with no DEI programs or anything similar, had previously defected from the regional Conservative Party over disagreements around economic issues, and then ended up building the region’s Mātou party into a third force in the region’s politics. The other parties have also nominated leaders, most notably the Greens’ Federal Conference voting in the sole woman in this first batch of leaders, Kiri Nikora, who was previously the Tropica City Green Party’s leader. 


With the leaders, map and dates confirmed, the party leaders are hitting the campaign trail to push to the public why they should be the one claiming victory on election night. 

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Tropica Today

Descision 5623 - Labour wins most seats, will form government with Green Party

Nikutabi - June 5623 (backdated) - After two months of campaigning, Tropicans have finally voted for the first National Assembly under the new constitution. And it was an emphatic victory for the Labour Party. Labour won 154 of 250 constituencies, and despite not being allocated any of the 150 top-up seats, finished 46 seats ahead of the Conservatives, who won 108. Labour is expected to form government with the Greens, who outperformed expectations, winning 15.34% of the vote, and scoring 55 seats from those votes. 

Addressing the Labour faithful on election night, Prime Minister-elect William Tama declared that he hopes to provide a stable, progressive government for the Federation. The exit polls suggested that ‘stable’ would not be part of that equation, with most forecasting a hung parliament with no clear majority coalition. But after all 250 constituencies were declared, and the Top-up seats were allocated, Labour held a clear mandate to govern. The formal government formation will take place at the National Assembly’s first plenary session of the term.

Some of the losers from election night were the hard-right TNP and Democratic Alliance, only picking up 6 and 1 seat respectively, after polls forecasted them to be holding a combined 20 to 30 only a couple of weeks ago. But of course, the biggest loser was Conservative leader Andrew Rangi. He came into election night with high hopes. Still, his party ended up getting destroyed, mostly due to the distortion that the constituencies create in the proportional results, as the Conservatives finished only 1.92% behind Labour in the popular vote. However, Rangi will still lead the Conservatives in the Assembly, with no intention of resigning.

The results of the referendum on the formal adoption of the new constitution are yet to be formally declared, but it is expected to pass with a 90%+ ‘yes’ vote. 

5623 TROPICAN FEDERAL ELECTION - OFFICIAL RESULT

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Tropica Today

Labour-Greens coalition celebrates legislative successes in first 18 months

Nikutabi - November 5624 - A year and a half on from Tropica’s first election under the new constitution, the Parliament is getting into the slow lull of normality. William Tama’s Labour-Green coalition has passed various laws that’ve started up several undeniably massive welfare programs, alongside other progressive initiatives. The most notable of these is ’TropiCare’, a somewhat oddly named Universal Healthcare program. A pet project of Tama’s, it was the first bit of actual policy passed by the Parliament in its first session. Under TropiCare, 95% of trips to the GP will be paid for by the state. A similar figure applies to non-elective surgeries, but elective surgeries will not be covered under the program. Opposition leader Andrew Rangi criticised the ‘wastage’ of the budget on the program, as well as the tax hikes on the higher income brackets to pay for it. 


Another major piece of legislation that passed in the first 18 months of the new Parliament was the Emissions Trading Scheme, a key policy in the Green Party’s manifesto if they got into a coalition, and Green environment minister Adam Reece managed to push it through cabinet with help from his party’s leader, Deputy PM Kiri Nikora. The legislation passed the Assembly 246-153, with the Labour and Green MNAs being joined by all 29 Democrat MNAs and 9 Pati Mātou MNAs. The scheme also passed the National Council easily, 18-16 (1 absent) with the 18 Labour councillors all voting for. The scheme came into effect at the start of FY26, and has already seen many of the Federation’s biggest polluters sign on and reap the benefits the scheme offered. Although in his quest to oppose everything this undeniably centre-left government puts forward that isn’t extolling true conservative values, Andrew Rangi has announced that if he’s elected in the June 5628 election (which is still 4 years away), scrapping the ETS will be the first thing he’ll do, even though the Conservatives getting elected in 5628 at this rate looks more and more unlikely by the day, as Prime Minister Tama’s approval ratings continue to soar, reaching a net positive of 12% in the latest Tropican Broadcasting Corporation poll, and the Conservatives are currently sitting anywhere between 3 and 5 points behind Labour over the last ten polls.

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Tropica Today
5626 Presidential Election - Preview

January 5626 - Nikutabi - Five years on from the reformation of the Federal Government, Tropica’s return to normalcy will be completed as a the new head of state, the President, is elected by a joint session of the National Assembly and National Council. For a party to nominate a candidate, the party must hold at least 5% of the seats in Parliament, which works out to 22 seats. This means that the following parties will be allowed to nominate a candidate each:

• Labour (172 seats)
  
• Conservatives (122 seats)
  
• Green (55 seats)
  
• Democrats (29 seats)
  

The remaining 6 parties with representation, making up 57 seats in total, will only be allowed to vote in the ballots. Considering that an absolute majority of 218 is needed to win on the first 5 ballots, this makes coalition-building to elect a president a lot easier.

The candidates that have so far been nominated by the parties are:

Rachel Maata (Labour), the highest-ranking unsuccessful candidate (in Labour’s internal structure), at the 5623 election, missing out in Tropica City’s 12th constituency by 216 votes in a three-way contest. She’s going in as the favourite, thanks to her party easily being able to throw together a majority with the Greens. Although it is expected that the Greens will back their candidate, Cameron Adams, for the first few ballots.

Tim Black (Conservatives), the powerbroker of the centrist, Liberal conservative faction of the Tories won the nomination narrowly thanks to support from the centre-right and libertarian factions. He’s currently a Member of the National Assembly, and will trigger a by-election in his safe seat in Taitokerau’s 5th district if he wins. However, Black winning would be difficult to say the least. He’d need to have some of the Greens or Labour MNAs and MNCs vote against their parties’ nominees, and convince the Democrats to ditch their nominee for him, as well as each of the non-nominating parties. If he can somehow win, it will be a massive shock for the average political observer.

Cameron Adams (Greens), is one of two nominees who certainly have no chance at winning the presidency unless something odd happens. Adams is currently a Regional Councillor in Moutere Coromaru, and the leader of the Greens’ parliamentary party there. He won the nomination unopposed, and will probably have his supporters move to supporting Maata in the fourth or fifth ballot, if they come around.

Hannah Khan (Democrats), is the surprise nominee to contest the presidency. The Democrats were expected to forfeit their nomination and allow their MNAs to vote however they liked. But, the nomination convention somehow had Khan beat ‘Unattached’ during the fifth round of the instant runoff contest. Her hopes are even less than the Greens, and the expectation is that her support will collapse in the second or third ballot.

Tropica Today will bring ballot-by-ballot coverage of the 5626 Tropican Presidential Election daily, from Parliament House in Nikutabi.

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Tropica Today

5626 Presidential Election - first ballot live blog

The following are excerpts from Tropica Today’s live blog on the first two ballots of the 5626 Presidential Election

9:34am - How is the process going to go?
We’ve been receiving a lot of questions about how the formal process is going to work, so here’s a detailed summary:

The 435 Members of both Houses of Parliament (400 MNAs and 35 MNCs) will begin to enter the National Assembly chamber at 10am local time. The Speaker of the National Assembly, currently Labour’s Simon Wainui, will be at the front of the line, and will preside over the session (although that role will be given to outgoing presidents in future elections). After Wainui, Prime Minister William Tama and opposition leader Andrew Rangi will enter side-by-side, followed by their deputies, and then the remaining members will file into their seats.

After that, ballots will be distributed to all 435 members. These ballots will have four names on them, each of a nominated candidate. One of these names will need to be marked for a valid vote to be cast. Ballots will be placed into each party’s ballot box and first counted up by some poor intern before being read out in summary by that party’s whip. This will be done in alphabetical order. 

Once all parties have declared their results, if there is a majority, the chair will declare the session closed, and invite the newly-elected president down into the bowl of the chamber to be sworn in. If there’s not a majority, the chair will declare a 3 hour recess before a second ballot can be taken. There’s a limit of two ballots per day, so we could be in the exact same position this time Friday morning.

That should be an understandable summary for you all. See you again during the first ballot.

10:45am to 11:05am - First ballot declaration 
10:45am - Speaker Simon Wainui has handed the floor to Conservative whip Julie Banks, and the first declaration for the first ballot is: 122 votes for Tim Black. 

10:47am - Democrats whip Victoria Walker is handed the floor next, declaring 28 votes for Hannah Khan, and 1 blank ballot. 

10:49am - The Democratic Alliance’s sole MNA Trevor Lewis declares the solitary vote from the DA is for Tim Black. Quite a shock. (not really)

10:51am - Greens whip Jack Hare is next, declaring 51 votes for Cameron Adams, 2 votes for Hannah Khan, and 2 blank ballots.

10:53am - The fifth whip to step up to the podium is Labour’s Meika Tawa. She declares 169 votes for Rachel Maata, 1 vote for Cameron Adams, and 2 blank ballots.

With half the parties results declared, the standings currently sit at:
Rachel Maata (Labour) - 169 votes
Tim Black (Conservatives) - 123 votes
Cameron Adams (Greens) - 52 votes
Hannah Khan (Democrats) - 30 votes
Blank Ballots - 5 votes

It’s safe to call no clear majority will occur in this ballot with 5 parties still to declare.

10:55am - Pa’ina Kanakan whip Willow Maui declares 7 votes for Tim Black, 6 votes for Rachel Maata, 2 votes for Cameron Adams, and 6 blank ballots. This ensures no majority can form, so we’ll be having a second ballot later today.

10:57am - Pati Mātou’s whip Laura Rawhiti declares 9 votes for Rachel Maata, 4 votes for Tim Black, and 2 blank ballots.

10:59am - Pati Teoan Tagata whip Kai Petersen declares 5 votes for Hannah Khan, 4 votes for Rachel Maata, 2 votes for Tim Black, and 1 vote for Cameron Adams.

11:01am - Raktavan Dal leader Virat Sharma declares all 3 votes for Hannah Khan. 

11:03am - The final party to stand up and announce their votes, the TNP, represented by leader Alan Palmer, declares 6 votes for Tim Black.

11:05am - Speaker Simon Wainui formally declares ballot one’s final result:

Rachel Maata (Labour) - 188 votes
Tim Black (Conservatives) - 142 votes
Cameron Adams (Greens) - 55 votes
Hannah Khan (Democrats) - 38 votes
Blank Ballots - 13 votes

Since no candidate has reached an absolute majority of 218 votes, a 3-hour recess of the session is called. All 435 members present are now leaving the chamber to return to the party caucus rooms.

The next ballot will take place at 2:30pm.

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Tropica Today

Conservatives unveil manifesto a year prior to election

Takutai Tonga - July 5627 - Following Labour managing to elect the first President under the new constitution, Rachel Maata, on the third ballot of the joint session of Parliament, the Conservative Party has been going through a bit of soul searching. Leader Andrew Rangi has been going around the country attempting to sell a pseudo-manifesto, Tropica on Track, that the Tories released in June that’s outlining their promises if they win the election scheduled for June next year. The key promises are somewhat out of the box, but are not that far out either.

The first promise surrounds the electoral system, which has been ranted about by many a Tory MNA over the past two and a half years. The Tories propose the replacement of the FPTP-Supplementary system (as it’s been dubbed by the psephology blogs), with a Closed-List Proportional Representation system with levelling seats by the 5632 election, or, at the minimum, a switch to a system closer to mixed-member proportional, including thresholds, rather than the threshold-less system that struggles to create true PR in most cases. 

Second, an unexpectedly progressive idea of closing the gender pay gap in public service jobs, with a catch. All public servants will have a base wage, regardless of gender, equivalent to the current average wage for Female public servants (roughly T$56,000 per annum). The stated aim of this is to bring down the pay gap and attempt to make private businesses do the same, but given the final promise, it’s more likely to show that cutting the public service down to bare bones by subtly forcing people to resign and not replacing them can deliver a budget surplus, which Labour has written off at least until FY36. However, Labour has copied this promise, with the crucial difference that the universal base annual wage will be T$60,000 per annum, in the middle ground of the current average wage for male and female public servants. So if anything, this could lose more votes than it gains. 

The final, and most controversial promise, is a complete and total reform of the welfare department. The Tories are suggesting the following are scrapped:

• 90% of Disability benefits, with all but the most severe disability ‘categories’ (that the party has drawn up based off some decades old research paper that they’re treating as the latest and greatest), having no benefits attached if they disrupt work.
  
• The section of TropiCare that focuses on attempting to make crucial medication cost as low as possible, possibly putting millions of low-income Tropicans at risk
  
• Anything ‘free’ or ‘bulk-billed’ apart from vaccinations for under 16s and testing for cancerous growths for all ages.
  

As anyone might expect, this last one has completely screwed any chance of the good ideas that the first two promises have of being covered in the media.

Various commentators have argued that this is Rangi’s last attempt at getting himself a shot at the Prime Ministership, given he was already languishing in the polls before this, but the early manifesto has made things worse,as the Conservatives have plummeted from their somewhat decent but also somewhat poor 28% average to 24%, most of that lost vote splitting between the three ethnic parties (Pati Mātou, Pa’ina Kanakan, and Pati Teoan Tagata), as well as the small-l liberal Democrats. The Tama Labour Government is looking all but certain to win a second term in office, sitting at 36% of the vote in the latest polls, which would translate to probably close to an outright majority on FPTP seats alone, Although the Greens will probably be needed to ensure stability.