We are on the verge of a landmark: an apolitical Secretary of State.
Officially speaking, the Secretary of State of Talossa has always been a non-political job, we wouldn’t want it any other way.
After all, we have a single person in charge of finalising immigration, publishing our Clarks, tallying the votes on the bills, running our elections, making the rules on how the elections occurs and even on acknowledging renunciations.
Would we want a biased Secretary of State?
So let’s review the history of the position and see how independent from the government and politics the Chancery has been.
After all, I was the first Secretary of State to become a party leader, or was I?
The first Secretary of State, Ian von Metairia, held the office from the sixth Cosa until the nineteenth (with the exception of a 6 months pause in 1991 where King Ben Madison replaced him).
Ian was, until the thirteenth Cosa, the leader of the TNP and its sole Cosa member. During the thirteenth Cosa, he joined the PC majority and actually became Prime-minister for four consecutive Clarks during which he was both Prime-Minister of Talossa and Secretary of State!
Ian’s next three successors were Secretary of State either held the office for a single Cosa or barely more than that.
Wes Erni, a former PC prime-minister, was a PC member and PC Cosa Member and Sean Dale Hart was also a PC member and Cosa Member.
During the twenty-second Cosa, Evan P. Gallagher became the first Secretary of State to be truly independent from the government, but he was nonetheless a Cosa Member, first as a member of the SP party and then as an independent.
In his final Clark as Secretary of State, he was both in the Cosa as an independent and Senator of Cézembre.
What is of interest is that after his six Clarks as Secretary of State, Evan actually voted for the PC, breaking his full independence from the majority government.
Charles Saul replaced him and is notorious for being the most incompetent Secretary of State of the history of the Kingdom, being responsible for the Cosa Number scandal when he failed to properly increment the Clark number and instead, propelled the Kingdom three Cosas into the future…
Charles was a sitting Cosa member for, once again, the PC party.
Finally, for the twenty-fourth Cosa saw the first and so far only truly independent Secretary of State from the government in the person of Ián Anglatzarâ, who is also the “oldest” still active Secretary of State.
Ián Anglatzarâ was a fervent opponent of the PC and a sitting Cosa member, first as an independent and later as a TLP member.
But Ian also holds the distinction of the being the Secretary of State who ran the Chancery the longest without sitting in the Ziu, in his final three Clarks (the first three of the twenty-sixth Cosa).
He was replaced for the remaining two Clarks by Tamoran Dal Nava, who had been the PC Prime-Minister of the previous two Cosas and who was still then a PC Cosa member.
Daviu Focteir, leader of the RCT opposition party replace him for two Cosas and while he was not a member of the PC, he was a leader of a political party and later, in the thirty-second and thirty-third Cosa, actually voted for the MN who was by then the new government party, but even if that was years after being Secretary of State, he still eventually voted for the government even if the link is tenuous at best.
I followed Daviu as Secretary of State and during almost my whole tenure, I was a sitting PC Cosa Member and eventually, the Senator for Ataturk, being both for a long time.
I certainly was in the Ziu the whole time…
My successor was King Robert, the puppet master behind of the PC and later of the MN and his successor became current King John.
Before being King however, John was a supporter of the CLP party and either a CLP cosa member of the Senator for Cezembre for the whole of his term as Secretary of State. Granted, the CLP was initially the opposition but it eventually gained power and became the government for two Cosa.
He was either a CLP Cosa member or Senator for Florencia for his whole term as Secretary of State.
King Johns’ successors, Mick Preston and Iusti Canun, each serving for about four and half Cosas, were both RUMP majority Cosa members or (in the Case of Mick’s last three and half Cosa), a Senator and a member of the RUMP party.
Iusti was even a former RUMP Prime-Minister!
As you can see, we only had one truly independent Secretary from the Government, Ián Anglatzarâ, but he was far from being independent from the Ziu itself.
This is about to change…
With 47RZ31, the Secretary of State would not be able to actually sit in the Ziu and as such, if passed and ratified in a referendum, would break the cycle of “double-dipping” that has existed for the whole history of the Clark save for 3 isolated Clarks during the 26th Cosa.
This historic bill would divorce our highest bureaucrat from the Ziu, possibly breaking the cycle of having a Secretary of State from the majority party.
Many Secretary of States are also former Prime-Ministers or later became one. This association was always odd to me as I see both positions as being diametrically opposed in the qualities required to hold these offices.
Perhaps 47RZ31 will change that since being head of the Chancery would mean vacating the Ziu…
In my case, I plan to serve as Secretary of State, with the permission of the Ziu of course, for at least another twenty-four Clarks or four Cosas in order to surpass Ian von Meteiria as the longest serving Secretary of State while sharing his longest number of consecutive Clarks as Secretary of State.
But that’s two years far in to the future. The office is renowned for sudden vacancies and broken promises of continuity.
0 comments:
Post a Comment