2018 Presidential Election

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lord caedus

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Wednesday, November 13th 2019

Lessig: Progress on Qumari constitution is "coming along nicely"

Jabal Nafusah — Former Secretary of Education Lawrence Lessig, serving as the facilitator for drafting of a new Qumari constitution, was positive in his first media appearance since the country's parliament began working to craft a new constitution. Speaking via satellite on Al Jazeera, Lessig said that the members of Qumar's parliament had "made positive progress" and that several key planks of a future constitution look like they will be included in a proposed constitution due in April 2020.

"In terms of progress, things are coming along nicely," Lessig said. "There appears to be fewer sticking points than I had anticipated on several key issues, which is, I think, a good sign for meeting the deadline of April 22nd." As few of the subcommittees have finalized their recommendations to the convention as a whole, Lessig revealed the only major change that so far has been recommended is to include a right to education for all Qumari citizens. The country has long been criticized internationally for the tremendous gap in the educational opportunities provided to boys and girls, with the female literacy rate lagging far behind rates for males, especially in rural provinces. The government of prime minister Zuben Ahmed has sought international aid in rebuilding and expanding the country's school system now that Jabal Nafusah has resumed control over all of Qumar.

The former Secretary of Education under President Matthew Santos is a renowned expert on national constitutions and has had a part in crafting many of the constitutions that have been written since the end of the Cold War. He is assisted in his role as facilitator by Qumari civil servants as well as officials with the Department of State, European Union and United Nations who serve as technical advisers.
 

Marky Bunny

th

Thursday November 14th 2019

Deputy Speaker Jack Smith expected to be elected by the House of Commons

Labour MP Jack Smith (Bootle) is expected to be the new Speaker of the House of Commons. Smith who is 62 years old, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1990 at a by-election. Smith was one of the two other candidates who ran for the speakership in 2009 along with Anthony Walker and the now retired Conservative Sir Henry Reedwood.

The Government is keen for a non-contested election, and we understand that Conservative whips have been trying to persuade possible candidates such as Francis Green and Sir Patrick Walters, not to stand. The two other current Deputy Speakers, George Bradby (Labour) and Martin Spearing (Conservative) have already announced that they would not be putting their names forward.

The election for speaker is expected to take place this coming Monday, November 18th.
 
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Marky Bunny

KingCrawa said:
Interesting that this universe hasn't had a female Speaker of the House yet.
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Have checked the first thread, it seems there was no "Betty Boothroyd" figure. It was established that the speakers previous to Walker talking over in 2009, where Richard Rider (Enfield Southgate Labour) 2000 to 2009, clearly established as being elected by the incoming Parliament after Meyer won re-election. He replaced the retiring Conservative George Heath (no seat given) who had served for eight years, so I guess he took over from the "Real life" Bernard Weatherill in 1992 with Weatherill serving a year in the 1991 elected Parliament before retiring.
 

lord caedus

OOC: Kind of odd that the government is putting pressure on its MPs for a non-contested speaker election, especially to let a Labour MP take it when they have a decent-ish working majority. Can't imagine their backbenchers are taking it well.

KingCrawa said:
Interesting that this universe hasn't had a female Speaker of the House yet.
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To be fair, IOTL the UK has only had the one and no other woman has come close to getting the chair since.
 

Marky Bunny

lord caedus said:
OOC: Kind of odd that the government is putting pressure on its MPs for a non-contested speaker election, especially to let a Labour MP take it when they have a decent-ish working majority. Can't imagine their backbenchers are taking it well.
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This is how in the real world it was done prior to 2009. A candidate for Speaker would "emerge" and that figure would be supported by both Front benches, even though the choice could be contentious as happened in 1971 with Selwyn Lloyd, who had been a former Conservative Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, plenty on both sides of the House opposed him being chosen, but it went through.
lord caedus said:
To be fair, IOTL the UK has only had the one and no other woman has come close to getting the chair since
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Correct, Harman who was thought to have a decent chance the other week, did worse than expected.
 

lord caedus

Marky Bunny said:
This is how in the real world it was done prior to 2009. A candidate for Speaker would "emerge" and that figure would be supported by both Front benches, even though the choice could be contentious as happened in 1971 with Selwyn Lloyd, who had been a former Conservative Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, plenty on both sides of the House opposed him being chosen, but it went through.
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Right, but that was always with the government picking a member of its own party (or coalition partner) to be speaker, even when they were in a minority government. Boothroyd was the only OTL speaker between 1835 and the current system first being used in 2009 that was an opposition MP when they were first elected and that was over the Major government's choice to replace Weatherill.

Either way, which system does the Commons use to elect its speaker? The current OTL one or the pre-2009 system of motions and amendments?
 

Marky Bunny

lord caedus said:
Either way, which system does the Commons use to elect its speaker? The current OTL one or the pre-2009 system of motions and amendments?
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I checked through the 2009 stuff and the election of Anthony Walker and background of the previous speakerships where done by someone else no longer involved, (and no it wasn't disputed) and it says Walker won a vote against Smith and Reedwood as I have mentioned. What type of the vote that was I don't know as he didn't say.
 

lord caedus

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Friday, November 15th 2019

Senate approves BigHorse nomination

The Senate today approved the nomination of Scott BigHorse (D-SD) to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, placing him in charge of the nation's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). After a unanimous vote, BigHorse issued a statement of thanks to his constituents alongside his resignation from his seat in the House of Representatives, saying that he "treasured representing all the people of South Dakota for these past 18 years." BigHorse pursued the Democratic nomination in 2018 before dropping out after the Iowa caucuses. He narrowly won re-election to his House seat in 2018 and was viewed as an endangered incumbent heading into the 2020 midterms.

The new BIA director's priorities will reportedly include greater input from tribal bands and members on federal policy, increasing investments for communications and transportation in rural Native American communities, and "public transparency for the BIA's historic role in perpetuating injustices and abrogations of its responsibilities" between its founding in 1824 and the reform that abolished the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1981.

South Dakota Governor Richard Dean (R) is expected to call for a special election to be held on April 7, 2020, the same day as a special election to fill the other House vacancy (in Arizona's 6th district, following Republican Sam Fellows' retirement). By area only slightly smaller than the island of Great Britain, South Dakota's sole at-large congressional district has been held by Democrats since 1983. But on the presidential level, the state is solidly Republican, having voted for the Democrats only twice (during Josiah Bartlet's 2002 landslide and 2010 with native Wendell Tripplehorn on the ticket) in the fifty years between the 1968 and 2018 elections. With the decline in split-ticket voting across the country for congressional and presidential races, the district has been trending ever more Republican since 2010. Several candidates have already expressed their intent to run for the yet-to-be-called special election on the Republican side, but no takers have stepped forward for the Democratic nomination.
 

lord caedus

Marky Bunny said:
It will take place early in the New Year. A new incoming President's Inauguration counts as his first "State of the Union".
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OOC: Note that this is different from OTL. IOTL, there is usually no formal "State of the Union" address during the first year of a new president's term, since the outgoing president leaves 20 days into the year and the new president, of course, has not had time to prepare a report to Congress on the state of the country. Typically, new presidents have given addresses to joint sessions of Congress within the first few months of their term that are de facto States of the Union, but are not called as such.

In the show, Bartlet, whose term began January 20th, 1999 had his third State of the Union (shown in the appropriately-titled episode titled "Bartlet's Third State of the Union") take place in January 2001, which means in The West Wing universe, the inaugural address for a new president (presumably meaning only regularly-scheduled changes of power, not presidents who entered office via death or resignation of their predecessor) is considered a State of the Union address.
 

Marky Bunny

th

Thursday November 21st 2019

"Super Thursday" By-Election Polling

In a weeks time there will be three by-elections. These will be held in Darlington, Hackney South & Shoreditch and Manchester Central.

Darlington
By-election required due to the resignation of former Labour Leader Andrea Benn to become the new UK Ambassador to the State of Jerusalem.
Current Labour Majority: 12,439
Labour: 33%
NPP: 27%
Conservative: 26%
Socialist Alliance: 5%
Liberal Democrat: 4%
Green: 2%
Others: 3%
Hackney South & Shoreditch
By-election required by MP Daniel Lamont changing party and becoming a member of the Socialist Alliance, he resigned to fight the seat for his new party.
Current Labour Majority: 27,613
Socialist Alliance: 46%
Labour: 30%
Conservative: 13%
Liberal Democrat: 4%
NPP: 3%
Others: 4%
Note the Green party and the Save the NHS party are not standing candidates and have both declared support for Daniel Lamont.
Manchester Central
By-election required due to MP Hannah Martin resigning for "family reasons".
Current Labour Majority:27,356
Labour: 56%
Conservative: 14%
NPP: 13%
Socialist Alliance: 6%
Liberal Democrat: 5%
Green: 4%
Others: 2%
Polling from You Gov carried out from Nov 15 to Nov 20



 

lord caedus

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Thursday, 21 November 2019

Hussein's absence fuels rumors of stroke

The public absence of Iraq President Saddam Hussein from public view for almost three weeks has fueled rumors that the longtime Iraqi president has suffered a debilitating stroke. Having last appeared in public in the capital city of Baghdad on 3 November, Hussein's prolonged absence from state media and lack of scheduled public appearances has not been commented on by the regime other than to deny that Hussein is suffering from ill health.

Although the 82 year-old Hussein has not had any health issues reported by Iraqi media, defectors from within the regime have reported that Hussein has had at least one heart attack and that he reportedly has memory lapses after prolonged exertion.

Hussein, who has ruled Iraq as a strongman dictator since 1979, has fostered a personality cult that has pervaded every aspect of Iraqi society for the past four decades. Thousands of statues, murals, posters and portraits of the president blanket the country, and his handwriting appears on the state flag in the form of the Arabic takbir (the phrase "Allahu akbar" or "God is great", a profession of Muslim faith). His regime is frequently cited as one of the most brutal and repressive currently in power, with the estimated number of Iraqis killed in either political purges or genocides against ethnic or religious groups opposed to the Sunni-led regime runs into the hundreds of thousands. Hussein's invasions of Iran (in 1979) and Kuwait (in 1990) both triggered wars that similarly saw hundreds of thousands killed. Since 1991, the United States and United Kingdom have enforced a "no fly zone" in the northern part of the country to protect Iraq's Kurdish population against another attempted genocide (a southern "no fly zone" to protect the country's Shi'ite population was in place from 1991 until 2005, when it was removed after a United Nations report that stated the regime had destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile).

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Thursday, November 21st 2019

Seaborn nominates Roberta Tyson for Fed chair

President Sam Seaborn named Roberta Tyson of the Federal Reserve Board as his nominee for the position of Chair of the Federal Reserve today. Seaborn, speaking with Tyson by his side, called her "one of the nation's foremost economists" and someone whose "hard work and dedication" has served the country well during her time on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. Carl Broome, the previous Federal Reserve Chair, declined to serve for a third term and retired from the Federal Reserve Board in August. Vice Chair Philip Gordon has overseen the board's operation since Broome's retirement and was considered a possible replacement according to CNBC.

Tyson was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board in 2010 under President Matthew Santos, then renominated by President Glen Allen Walken in 2014 to a full term. She previously was a professor of economics at MIT, specializing in macroeconomics and post-war economic history. If confirmed, she will be the first female Chair of the Federal Reserve.
 
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