[PASSED] Against Corruption

[United Bobtopia]

I still don't feel as if my objection to this being an ideological ban has been addressed.

There have been throughout histories many societies where there is nothing unethical about purchasing the votes of politicians. My nation is no exception. If an oil company, to name an example, wishes to purchase a vote then they are free to do so as long as they publicly post the information. The voters are able to decide if they find this acceptable or not.

Although this may offend your citizens, it's one of the bedrock foundations of mine.

Since humanity first came up with the idea of voting, there have been those who have used trade to influence those votes. This is human nature. Bobtopia does not believe in denying human nature with flawed legislation. Instead we believe in finding ways to lessen the negative impact of primal human behavior. Open, transparent and honest bribery is a core ideological position of ours.

I hope that this proposal is recognized as being an illegal proposal. Failing that, we will fight hard to combat this well meaning, but terribly flawed, proposal through voting. If that fails, then I feel as if the whole notion of the World Assembly has failed.

[Ossitania]

Unless you can actually name the ideology being banned, it's pretty much not an ideological ban.

[Araraukar]

Unless you can actually name the ideology being banned, it's pretty much not an ideological ban.

Well it could be an attempt to affect game mechanics, since there's "Corrupted Dictatorship" (for example) as a cathegory.

[Ossitania]

Unless you can actually name the ideology being banned, it's pretty much not an ideological ban.

Well it could be an attempt to affect game mechanics, since there's "Corrupted Dictatorship" (for example) as a cathegory.

Explicitly targeting nation categories is illegal. Making it difficult or even nigh impossible to achieve them through WA legislation is not.

[Of Ducktopia]

I fully support this draft since it cover's a lot of points vs. corruption...
Which I don't think is right is to BAN the ‘‘Corrupt’’ Ideology, since anyone can decide the best of it's country.
Beside's not all democratic political system's support this idea.
But for my opinion:
100% SUPPORT

[Weed]

I continue to reject the notion that this is an ideological ban. Corruption is not an ideology, and I will never accept such a definition. Again, I see corruption as the same type of issue as violence. Violence is a tool to advance your interests (be they ideological or personal) and so is corruption. Just like violence, because it is only a way to advance whatever ideology you may have, I don't, and won't see this as an ideological ban.

I also did not add a clause preventing nations from falling into the category of "Corrupt Dictatorship" so I am not attempting to change that classification, and I don't see myself as foul of that rule, either.

To the ambassador from Ossitania, first of all, thank you a lot for being so helpful. Secondly, yes I will change "terminated" as I said earlier. [ooc: Only reason I didn't change it when I said I would earlier in the thread is I've been working without a mouse or way to 'click' the edit button]. Secondly, I think I will remove the mandate to terminate the employment of an official taking a bribe. Now that it has been questioned, I have thought of the case when a President/Senator did specifically accept a bribe to vote yes on or sign a bill. Terminating the employment of those people, is generally a more difficult process than I made it out to be.. That was an oversight on my part, which I hadn't thought of. I don't want to leave it out entirely though, I am going to actually be stepping it up and require the act of accepting a bribe be illegal. I've replaced criminalization of accepting bribes in the 'strongly suggested list' with "demand officers and officials report attempted bribes," just to be sure no one misses that change.

[OOC @Ossitania: I don't know how to keep this going even close to ICly since we're now dealing with stats basically.. But my understanding of political freedoms is the right to assemble, petition, vote on everything including having referendums, and give money as far as changing leadership goes. From my knowledge of answering issues, those are the things that move the political freedoms stat. Economic freedoms are how people or businesses spend/earn their money. Maybe my definitions of these freedoms are wrong, they are inherently secret like most game-stat information, so I've been digging on NSwiki and the Got Issues, Gameplay, and Technical forums, and I can't really find anything that says this is what they mean. Honestly, I think with all the accused illegalities it would be rude of me to submit this and power it to quorum and force the mods to rule on a short timeframe. So I'll probably request a ruling before submitting on the category issue and the ideological ban / metagaming theories. However, I've made an attempt to figure things out myself. I chose option 1 of the issue too little talk on my puppet TannerFrankLand, and I also saved all the nation's analysis scores. After the update I'll check out the changes, and see which I think it effects more. I don't really care if you are right, I just want to be sure and figure out which one it is.]

---

Clinton Tew

WA Ambassador from Weed

[Ossitania]

To the ambassador from Ossitania, first of all, thank you a lot for being so helpful. Secondly, yes I will change "terminated" as I said earlier. [ooc: Only reason I didn't change it when I said I would earlier in the thread is I've been working without a mouse or way to 'click' the edit button]. Secondly, I think I will remove the mandate to terminate the employment of an official taking a bribe. Now that it has been questioned, I have thought of the case when a President/Senator did specifically accept a bribe to vote yes on or sign a bill. Terminating the employment of those people, is generally a more difficult process than I made it out to be.. That was an oversight on my part, which I hadn't thought of. I don't want to leave it out entirely though, I am going to actually be stepping it up and require the act of accepting a bribe be illegal. I've replaced criminalization of accepting bribes in the 'strongly suggested list' with "demand officers and officials report attempted bribes," just to be sure no one misses that change.

We thank the ambassador for taking our suggestions into account.

[OOC @Ossitania: I don't know how to keep this going even close to ICly since we're now dealing with stats basically.. But my understanding of political freedoms is the right to assemble, petition, vote on everything including having referendums, and give money as far as changing leadership goes. From my knowledge of answering issues, those are the things that move the political freedoms stat. Economic freedoms are how people or businesses spend/earn their money. Maybe my definitions of these freedoms are wrong, they are inherently secret like most game-stat information, so I've been digging on NSwiki and the Got Issues, Gameplay, and Technical forums, and I can't really find anything that says this is what they mean. Honestly, I think with all the accused illegalities it would be rude of me to submit this and power it to quorum and force the mods to rule on a short timeframe. So I'll probably request a ruling before submitting on the category issue and the ideological ban / metagaming theories. However, I've made an attempt to figure things out myself. I chose option 1 of the issue too little talk on my puppet TannerFrankLand, and I also saved all the nation's analysis scores. After the update I'll check out the changes, and see which I think it effects more. I don't really care if you are right, I just want to be sure and figure out which one it is.]

OOC: I don't really think that it's game stats, since political and economic freedoms are real freedoms which exist in the real world, but it's your prerogative to use that if your standard if you wish, I guess. I think your definitions are pretty correct and could go either way but that it leans towards Political Stability because you're specifically targeting unethical use of money to take advantage of political power, not the unethical use of money in general.

[Discoveria]

Also, to the ambassador from Discoveria: if you see the final note and giant message written atop the draft, your concern was covered in the list of questions and comments I predicted. Your ability to use bribes for counter-intelligence is certainly not impacted here. We do however acknowledge "terminated" was a lapse in judgement on my part during writing. I'll take your suggestion there! [ooc: I'm operating without a mouse now, and that's why I haven't quoted any posts. I'll edit it over the weekend or sometime when I can, for the record.]

OOC: Oops! Sorry I missed that. I'll be back later when I've thought more about this.

[United Bobtopia]

Would it be possible to reword this to ban bribery on an international level, rather than a national one?

It seems to me that if you want to tell my citizens that they can't bribe other nations, well, I don't have a problem with that. If one of my people enter another land and offer a suitcase full of cash, then you're welcome to arrest him by whatever international laws this body proposes.

My objection would be the way the bill, as it currently stands, impacts the structure of my government on an internal level. United Bobtopia would be happy to support this bill if this can be resolved.

[Ossitania]

Would it be possible to reword this to ban bribery on an international level, rather than a national one?

It seems to me that if you want to tell my citizens that they can't bribe other nations, well, I don't have a problem with that. If one of my people enter another land and offer a suitcase full of cash, then you're welcome to arrest him by whatever international laws this body proposes.

My objection would be the way the bill, as it currently stands, impacts the structure of my government on an internal level. United Bobtopia would be happy to support this bill if this can be resolved.

The presumption that corruption in your nation is of no international concern is highly dubious. Like it or not, the WA has taken it upon itself to promote democracy, so we're going to be opposed to bribery, which messes with the democratic process. We also all have a vested interest in making sure none of our companies are being systematically disadvantaged because they're too principled to bribe your officials - the WA promotes a free and fair market too.

[Sardakhar]

The Government of Sardakhar would like to voice its support for this draft "Against Corruption". We hope that this can lead to a corruption-free government which is also more transparent to the public, to the people of the nation, in its dealings.

If this draft ever comes to vote, we, through our WA-voting satellite state East Sardakhar, shall vote FOR it.

Jali Mortey
Sardakhar Minister of Foreign Affairs

[Discoveria]

"Now that our previous concern has been addressed," said Matthew, "our office is currently in favour of this proposal. It does seem likely to increase the effectiveness of government at many levels in society. Setting aside what I see as a hypocrisy in allowing state actors to offer bribes for non-economic purposes, we expect to support this proposal."

[Weed]

[OOC @Ossitania: I don't know how to keep this going even close to ICly since we're now dealing with stats basically.. But my understanding of political freedoms is the right to assemble, petition, vote on everything including having referendums, and give money as far as changing leadership goes. From my knowledge of answering issues, those are the things that move the political freedoms stat. Economic freedoms are how people or businesses spend/earn their money. Maybe my definitions of these freedoms are wrong, they are inherently secret like most game-stat information, so I've been digging on NSwiki and the Got Issues, Gameplay, and Technical forums, and I can't really find anything that says this is what they mean. Honestly, I think with all the accused illegalities it would be rude of me to submit this and power it to quorum and force the mods to rule on a short timeframe. So I'll probably request a ruling before submitting on the category issue and the ideological ban / metagaming theories. However, I've made an attempt to figure things out myself. I chose option 1 of the issue too little talk on my puppet TannerFrankLand, and I also saved all the nation's analysis scores. After the update I'll check out the changes, and see which I think it effects more. I don't really care if you are right, I just want to be sure and figure out which one it is.]

OOC: I don't really think that it's game stats, since political and economic freedoms are real freedoms which exist in the real world, but it's your prerogative to use that if your standard if you wish, I guess. I think your definitions are pretty correct and could go either way but that it leans towards Political Stability because you're specifically targeting unethical use of money to take advantage of political power, not the unethical use of money in general.

[OOC: I'm pretty sure the only reason we have categories is so the GA changes the right stats when a resolution is passed. Also, the only noticeable changes in stats were to political freedoms and averageness and authoritarianism. So I'm going to guess you were right and change it, but still ask for a ruling before I submit.]

To the ambassador of United Bobtopia, such a change is not going to be made.

To the ambassador of Discoveria, Professor Simon Goldacre, I don't see it as hypocritical at all, seeing as the motivations for the two acts are entirely different. At any rate, thank you for the support.

---

Clinton Tew

WA Ambassador from Weed

[Glen-Rhodes]

This is a pretty good proposal. e wonder, though, what this proposal would do about bribing foreign officials? Not every country is a member of this body, so they aren't bound to having anti bribery laws. These countries could be hotbeds of bribery. Glen-Rhodes has criminalized bribing foreign officials. Perhaps this should be the case in all member states?

- Dr. B. Castro

OOC: Also, wow. It looks like we need a primer on what an ideological ban is. It's being thrown around a lot lately, but some people seem to not know what an ideology or a ban really is.

[Weed]

This is a pretty good proposal. e wonder, though, what this proposal would do about bribing foreign officials? Not every country is a member of this body, so they aren't bound to having anti bribery laws. These countries could be hotbeds of bribery. Glen-Rhodes has criminalized bribing foreign officials. Perhaps this should be the case in all member states?

- Dr. B. Castro

I don't see anything in the definition that limits it to people within the same nation or within World Assembly member states. I also see no such restriction in the line mandating the ban of the defined actions. By my reading, that is what this does. Have I accidentally added a bit that contradicts my intent? Is it unclear enough I should specifically state that in its own clause?

---

Clinton Tew

WA Ambassador from Weed

[Discoveria]

To the ambassador of Discoveria, Professor Simon Goldacre, I don't see it as hypocritical at all, seeing as the motivations for the two acts are entirely different. At any rate, thank you for the support.

"My name's Matthew Turing," said Matthew. "Hmm, haven't I said that before in another debate? Anyways. Just letting you know."

OOC: I guess my signature is getting cluttered...

[Weed]

OOC: I guess my signature is getting cluttered...

OOC: No it's there, clear as day, just misread. My bad!

[Discoveria]

OOC: I guess my signature is getting cluttered...

OOC: No it's there, clear as day, just misread. My bad!

I changed my signature in the five minutes or so it must have taken you to post your reply.

[Weed]

OOC: This has been submitted as a test of something. In no way am I campaigning for this at the moment. Should, by some freak accident, this get near quorum it will be removed. The drafting process continues. This has been an OOC FYI, post.

[Abacathea]

OOC: This has been submitted as a test of something. In no way am I campaigning for this at the moment. Should, by some freak accident, this get near quorum it will be removed. The drafting process continues. This has been an OOC FYI, post.

OOC: Not trying to be a dick here, and I apologise if it comes across that way, but I feel this is bad practice and I know others agree with me on this. There's one thing putting something forward for quorum and finding things after the fact and having to pull it, that I can agree with, but admitting at submission your intent to pull it either way seems needless to me. Either the act is ready or it's not, the "endorsements" on it wont be a true reflection of it's character as it has been firmly established at this stage most delegates would endorse a proposal about two cats pissing on each other if the title was "something warm and fuzzy".

[Weed]

OOC: You seem to be under the impression that what I'm doing is gauging the number of approvals I will get. I assure you, when I want this to reach quorum, I will put it the queue well within one update. I've written 12 passed resolutions and put complete joke proposals up to vote in the past. I can get this to vote. If you think for a minute what I'm doing has anything to do with the approval process, you're greatly mistaken.

[Abacathea]

Then what are you hoping to achieve?

[Flibbleites]

[b]OOC: This has been submitted as a test of something.

If that "test" was of its legality (which I'm assuming it was since you filed a GHR asking if it was legal), then you didn't need to submit it. We can view the text on the forum just fine.

[Weed]

Yup, that's the plan, and I prefer it the other way. The moderation threads usually end in spamming moderation warnings/slaps on wrist. I'd rather avoid that, unless a moderator tells me not to this is the way I do it.

[Flibbleites]

Yup, that's the plan, and I prefer it the other way. The moderation threads usually end in spamming moderation warnings/slaps on wrist. I'd rather avoid that, unless a moderator tells me not to this is the way I do it.

Well, by doing it this way you do run the risk of being warned for submitting an illegal proposal, so I certainly wouldn't recommend this method.