Resignation-McChimp

[McChimp]

Hi all,

I've served in public offices on and off in Lazarus since September 2018, when I was confirmed as Speaker. Since then I've led ministries and governments, passed and defended various bits of legislation, and latterly served as a member of Lazarus' security council. During my time in that last post my advice and actions have helped to ward off more than one plot to overthrow the Lazarene state. I think I am proudest of the fact that the flag that flies over the region today was made by me.

Today I resigned from the CLS, and it will be the last post I held in Lazarus. There are two reasons for this:

Handling of Recent Security Threats

The handling of Feux's discovery in the region has left me disillusioned about the effectiveness of our security body and the value that I can provide by staying there. When our allies approached New Rogernomics with evidence that Debussy was Feux and that Wang Yao was likely involved in the plot, the only action he chose to pursue was to inform them that he had received this tip-off and to say "Folks are claiming Debussy is Feux. And even if that was the case, I'd hope we are friends enough OOC to not coup each other, which is what they are claiming might be happening". I asked both Debussy and Wang Yao to resign WA and they refused. I asked New Rogernomics to use his authority as the chair of the CLS to do the same, but he was in denial about the security threat we were facing and refused to do so, even though it may have given us essential information about whether Wang Yao was involved or not.

When IP evidence finally proved that the intelligence we had received about Debussy was correct, Feux was finally removed from the region. Had New Rogernomics not neglected a basic security function-the regular vetting of security officer IP addresses, which other GCRs perform as a matter of routine-Feux would have been caught a long time ago, and would likely never have posed the threat that he did to the region. It is shocking that he was not discovered before he was appointed security councillor and allowed close enough to the Delegate that a simple delbump would've handed the region to him had our allies not been paying close attention.

Feux's MO is not to work alone. Wang Yao's nation, amongst others he used, was founded on the same day as Debussy. Both were founded within two days of the Pharcyde, a known puppet of Milograd, who is also an associate of Feux's. Previously Wang Yao had been a member of Nephmir's region while Feux, Stujenske and A Mean Old Man were infiltrating Osiris. Our allies observed that Wang Yao's endorsements spiked unnaturally at the same time as Feux's and one piler even removed their endorsement from our Delegate, Treadwellia, before endorsing Wang Yao. Wang Yao also directly refused to banject nations which were endorsing Feux but not Treadwellia, forcing New Rogernomics to banject them himself, which he seemed to do without prioritising lower influence targets. This crippled New Rogernomics' influence, and halved the number of guardians who could be available and effective at update. Taken together, this extensive body of evidence casts considerable suspicion on Wang Yao.

Furthermore, Wang Yao later expressed that due to internet problems they could not banject nations from Lazarus, and that that would remain the case in the longer term. This means that Wang Yao is unable to perform the most basic task security councillors are responsible for, so their remaining on the CLS serves no purpose in any case.

In light of this, I lobbied New Rogernomics to remove Wang Yao from the security council, as they are unable to perform the role and it's a position that requires an unquestionable security record. His choice to abstain on the matter and failure to advise our delegate to vote for the motion prevented it from passing.

Political Developments
I am also increasingly unable to see my place in Lazarus' political future. I was responsible for instating a real democratic process under the twelfth mandate, and over the course of the last year I have watched New Rogernomics strip back that democracy to an oligarchy with himself at its head. Recent amendments creating the Executive Council have centralised power under his office, and he has used this new power to change the region fundamentally without consulting others. First he spoke about "Restoring the Lazarene Monarchy" in a speech he delivered in June, and denounced the value of elected representation. Most recently he has unilaterally re-themed the region, adopting a persona "Eldarion Mystifur". He claims ideological leadership of the region and expects us to respect him as a prophet. There is no way to escape the fact that he is attempting to cultivate a cult of personality. His recent speech calls for a "great crusade", and includes extremist language including the phrase "Lazarus for the Lazarenes", which has extremely dark undertones. Given the waning power of Lazarus' democratic institutions, when I look forward as Treadwellia becomes less politically active and a New Rogernomics delegacy looms, I no longer see a way for me to contribute meaningfully to our direction.​

Sign Off

Thanks for the last six years, it's been a wild ride

McChimp

 

[Eldarion]

[...] I lobbied New Rogernomics to remove Wang Yao from the security council, as they are unable to perform the role and it's a position that requires an unquestionable security record. His choice to abstain on the matter and failure to advise our delegate to vote for the motion prevented it from passing.

I'd have to disagree on this point, before anything else. Imkiville voted against. Treadwellia did not vote on the matter, and did not make his opinion known.

There was no way for the vote to pass.

I am also increasingly unable to see my place in Lazarus' political future. I was responsible for instating a real democratic process under the twelfth mandate, and over the course of the last year I have watched New Rogernomics strip back that democracy to an oligarchy with himself at its head.

That requires essentially ignoring all the actual contents within the Executive Council legislation I passed, and during the discussions I had in the region to others. Rather than stripping it, the role of the Executive Council was to provide Prime Minister and Cabinet Elections, and actually establish elected Representatives. Only after continuous Prime Minister elections where I was the only candidate, I choose to implement a system where if we had high levels of inactivity the Executive Council could take on that role. It was also of use during the period of Prime Minister elections, so we would never have almost half a month of inactivity between elections.

Most recently he has unilaterally re-themed the region, adopting a persona "Eldarion Mystifur". He claims ideological leadership of the region and expects us to respect him as a prophet.

That's grossly distorting the purpose of this, which really to mind discredits the rest of your rant. If you ever paid attention to the goals of this it was add value to our re-theming in the Greek theme. Rather than creating a 'prophet', this was to create the concept of philosopher kings, not actually adding any more powers but just adding RP titles and enjoyment to an otherwise dull and disused theme. Having no RP ideology doomed all the past themes to the same fate.

We would have had lots of fun regional RP after years of doing essentially nothing with themes. It was only a few people including myself that actually bothered to put in the work on any lore and RP, from LazCorp through to the Greek theme, and now you are attacking those same people for no good reason.

If you want to leave that is up to you, but dragging into the dirt anyone who actually cared about us having RP activity is a poor move.

 

[Wang Yao]

If I had known keeping my situation secret to the public for three whole weeks while being suspected wrongly would not avoid this from being turned into a petty drama in a time where we need unity, then I would have spoken more freely. For the TLDR: I got suspected by some of our allies of being related to Feux, a 3-weeks investigation happened which showed a total lack of evidence, McChimp pressured to resign if he didn't get a vote against me, the vote failed in the CLS and I'm now finally cleared.

There's a considerable amount of things that are said about myself that are either simply not true or misleading, I'll keep it short (that's a lie):

- The CLS did not wait for information against Feux to lower his nation's endorsements, otherwise the coup would have succeeded.
- Both you and myself encouraged to react quickly and not wait too long before proceeding to the ejections when the opposite had been suggested.
- Neither you or I proceeded to ejections, neither prior to the reveal of Feux's identity or after (And in my case after Feux was removed, I told the CLS to not give me back BC until the misunderstanding against me was clarified with our allies, I wasn't expecting it to last this long though). I prefer not to say I'll do something like you did when I'm not entirely certain of being available at a particular update, that's how security mechanics and coordination work. In any case I never directly or indirectly refused an order to ban a nation as a CLS member.

Maybe those things could have been clarified if you had had the courage to talk to me directly over the last weeks instead of hiding in other people's DMs, since we have exchanged a grand total of 0 message after the day Feux was banned.

- My security credentials and abilities are fine. Yes if I have exceptionally a slower internet which risks making it slower to ban nations right before TRR updates for example, then I say it, sharing your current availability is the best way to coordinate security. And I know a thing or two about that as the only player in Nationstates to have lasted over a 1,000 days as a Warzone Delegate without interruption, that doesn't happen without abilities regarding NS security and coordination. In any case the internet issue is not as grand as you say (it's just slower, sometimes shortly buggy at worse) and will be definitely fixed in a matter of days.
Finally, I also wouldn't take lessons in security from the member of the CLS who was the less active and neglected their duty to maintain high endorsements by a very large margin.

It's funny that you think I'm related to Milograd since Feux said he suspected me of being him as well. Did I pick the Yao name wrongly perhaps?
Or perhaps the middle school version of me who barely spoke English was making nerfarious plans with Nephmir?

My name is Wang Yao, I am myself and my duties are to Lazarus, no one else.

Nevertheless, thank you for your service to the region, I believe this personal crusade against me is misguided but I won't deny the implication in this region of someone who was both Prime Minister when I joined and part of my Cabinet when I took upon that role myself.

 

[joWhatup]

You've been one of the most consistent and prominent Lazarenes over the years, even if we didn't always agree on things. It's a shame to see you step down, and unfortunate how all this was handled. I haven't been around much for a long while now, I freely admit that, but I sincerely wish Lazarus the best and for you to change your mind in the future about holding office again.

 

[Domais]

Let me get this straight, McChimp was second-in-line to become Delegate. He was obviously gunning for Delegate and who would be his chief rival to become Vice-Delegate after Tubbs resigned in the future? You guessed it, Wang Yao, who alongside being the second most senior CLS member is also a Court Justice and a former Prime Minister. What's more is that McChimp was the only person who stood to benefit from Wang Yao's removal.

Maybe, just maybe, taking advantage of the chaos post coup attempt was McChimp's plan to secure the positions of Vice-Delegate, and thus, the positions of Delegate.

 

[Eldarion]

And since I said this on NSGP:

You want to hurt the Lazarus region publicly, and me especially. I think at this point you'll just say anything bad about me to see if it sticks. Even if I had said, which I don't believe I did, I never added them to the line of succession after me nor did Treadwellia.

But I'm waiting for you to fake DM's next or whatever you do when you just want to create dirt on someone and sully them. After all, from your point of view, you don't care about Lazarus, or the reputation of the Lazarus region in NSGP, and just want to see it burn and take as many people down with it. Because this is all about revenge.

That's the last I'll say on the matter. Do what you want, and when it is all over, and this NSGP thread finally quiets down. The rest of the region that actually cares about our reputation on NSGP, our relations with allied regions, and the activity of our region, will continue on fine.