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Hello Underhusen, greetings from your official political opposition and the bane of your existence for the next two months.

I have a few issues I would like you to address once you are in full working order (namely when you have selected your speaker and otherwise organized yourselves). I'm looking for unity in your rows, but in all fairness I admit that something like this is not customary here so it's up to you to choose how to respond, if you choose to do so at all.

Firstly I ask that you draft an official agenda letting the public know the highlights of what they can be expecting from this term. There can never be too many details, and I'll point out that this collective result should reflect your individual campaigns.

Since it's obvious that the passing of an OA act is currently uncertain, will you be dedicating yourselves into making something out of the Constitutional Convention, or will you be looking into and addressing issues with our current legislature, despite of the risk that such efforts may be nullified by the end of your term?

I call for an official statement about the possibility of conflict of interest in Underhusen. I have previously asked that candidates for the Underhusen would be required to disclose their connections with other regions upon running, and there has since been scattered discussions about related matters. Will you be ensuring that only the best and most trustworthy are in charge of our beloved region, and if so, how?

I have tried to stick with things that fall directly under your jurisdiction, sparing you from the usual nonsense of trying to stretch the role of the Underhusen beyond what majority is comfortable having it be. For now, at least.

I think our current members have been fairly straight-forward about their roles in other regions. I also believe most of them are not currently involved in other regions except as ambassadors for Wintreath. As for myself and North, we're both involved in New Hyperion, but if I recall he's been rather inactive on there, and I believe I've always been forthcoming about my role as Chancellor there too, something which has not prevented me from gaining positions in this region's legislature and executive government.

As such, I'm not sure I see a need for any more wide-spread declarations, as no one has hid their involvement as far as I can recall.

As for agendas, we certainly can't go wrong with setting one up. That's usually the prerogative of the Speaker, which we're sorely lacking at present.

I don't recall seeing a term long agendas but if that's something that the Underhusen nowadays forges by default, I apologize for my ignorance.

I'm not pursuing the current Underhusen with the initiative about transparency in terms of other regions, otherwise I would have pursued the issue during the election. Albeit I still maintain that not all voters are necessarily familiar with each candidate's backgrounds as they are not systematically listed anywhere (at least as far as I know), and that this information could be meaningful to some if made readily accessible during elections.

Instead of questioning the integrity of our current Underhusen, I'm discovering the possibility of having such transparency a required standard sometime in the future. You yourself expressed a level of xenophobia in the discussion about masking powers, I would have expected an open mind for this subject from you.

Naturally the ideal case would be to be able to expect same level of immediate transparency from the rest of the Government too, but since anything beyond Underhusen is really in Wintermoot's hands, I wanted to avoid any unnecessary comments about how that's not something any of us can (or even really should be able to) influence. The point in any case being that the subject matters.

Well, masking is part of the executive government, and it's just plainly a bad idea to have a system where anyone from another region can come in and mess around with it, although masking itself doesn't necessarily present that big a security risk. At worst, it can cause Moot some annoyances. Any other executive actions could be potentially hazardous though, but that doesn't really apply to the legislature. The Speaker and Chairman each have pretty substantial powers, and could erase our laws and stuff if they so wanted, which admittedly is rather concerning, but ultimately it probably comes down to being controlled by democracy. Do we trust the system not to elect such people? That's where the debate really starts.

EDIT: Actually, I'm dead wrong about masking not being a security risk. Anyone could become a member of the Riksråd through such masking and see everything that goes on in the cabinet. So disregard that rather ill-considered statement from me. It still doesn't have much to do with the legislature.

I believe that the only type of masking we were discussing was about granting and possibly revocation of citizenships, granting powers beyond that (throw ambassadorships in there somewhere as well) could indeed pose a risk and for no practical gain as other types of maskings are rarely needed.

Playing around with databases is not that hard, Wintermoot has the knowledge and wisdom to do it right if it ever comes down to that. For now this issue is between him and Point Breeze.

If you regard someone being able to gain Speaker's powers via false masking, wouldn't you agree that the issue still exists if the same "agent of another region" manages to do so through the proper channels? I'm a bit confused currently, do you or do you not agree with the concept that candidates could be required to unveil their foreign affiliations by default?

It's not an awfully fruity topic I imagine, but that's the one universal detail that will likely remain applicable no matter where your term takes the region, so until your peers - together or individually - tackle the two other matters I raised this is what I have for now.

I agree with people disclosing which other regions they're a part of in elections, but can't decide whether that should be forced through legislation or should just happen through the voters demanding answers to such questions.

As for masking, it's a somewhat separate issue from foreigners being able to run for Speaker and being appointed as Chairman, but there is probably some overlap. I'm not knowledgeable about programming, though, so if you believe there is a way to restrict people to only being able to give out and take away certain masks, then I can't really argue. If that is indeed possible, then it decreases the risk of foreigners coming in and messing things up substantially, to the point where I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of people from any region being appointed to mask other people, if their powers are that limited.

I think drafting an agenda might actually have some kind of merit - governments use manifestos IRL on which basis they're voted in, and for the most part if something's on a manifesto it's something that has to be delivered (akin to promising the electorate you'll deliver on it, although the Tories here ignore that small fact whenever it's working against them).

By drafting up a list of things we want to address, we can go forward with a firm idea of what we need to achieve this term.

Got to go eat, but I'll edit this post with my other answers shortly.

Right - re: conflict of interests, this isn't an issue for me as I'm Wintrean only, and as for the Convention I think we've put a lot of effort into it and it'd be a shame to see it go to waste without exhaustive exploration of potential compromises and fixes.

I'm usually rather honest and I try and disclose my ties to other regions (which I do believe I include in my signature, for the most part).

Also masking itself is an administrative issue, and as such one where the Storting, Judiciary, or Monarchy, can not really touch. Only Wintermoot (Holding the Root Administrative Position) can do such things.

I intend to pursue the open assembly model, but I'm not opposed to reforms of the current system.  I would prefer, however, to remodel the system.

I have no qualms about requiring disclosure of foreign interests of candidates.  Perhaps that's one thing we can put on our agenda! 

And regarding masking - I think if someone is going to be so malicious and insidious as to gain the trust of the region's founder and cabinet enough to be appointed as a Jarl or Thane or some other administrative position like Laws Admin, then there isn't much we can do to prevent that beyond what we already do.  Moot certainly realizes the gravity of such an appointment, and I'm not sure if the man has ever made any decision lightly and without careful consideration.  As I said regarding the "foreign threat" in the Constitutional Convention, I believe those fears are overblown.