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Bill: Martial Law Prevention Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: LibCom Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: December 2130
Description[?]:
| Military personnel are not trained for police duties, which are highly specialised, and should never have to carry out such duties. This doesn't preclude the army from providing logistical support, which, in an emergency, would allow the police to allocate more personnel to actual policing. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The nation's policy on the separation of the police and the military.
Old value:: A civilian police force is in place and the military may be called in to help in serious emergencies.
Current: A civilian police force is in place and the military is not allowed to play any part in it.
Proposed: A civilian police force is in place and the military is not allowed to play any part in it.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 04:06:16, October 20, 2005 CET | From |  Protectorate Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | and in situations where the civilian police force is incapable of handling the situations? Such as riots, natural disasters (ooc: NEw orleans) where the normal police force will be severely undermanned for such a task. |
| Date | 16:57:15, October 20, 2005 CET | From | Ministerial Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | As the Protectorate's said, this would simply make things worse. |
| Date | 18:39:08, October 20, 2005 CET | From | Malivia Democratic Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | Will not support this bill. And I'm getting increasingly annoyed at parties that are trying to pass a law that clearly states one thing, and people end up saying it means something else. The proposed law reads: "and the military is not allowed to play any part in it.". What part of 'not allowed to play any part' doesn't the Libcom party understand? You cannot have a military offering logistical support under the Libcoms proposed bill, because that would be a violation of the proposed law as written. |
| Date | 00:56:23, October 21, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | ooc: Nonsense. Logistical support is simply not policing. The game obviously doesn't encode every conceivable option, so you sometimes have to clarify exactly what a given law proposes to do. ic: If the civilian police force is incapable of handling a riot, then we need to increase their budget, not allow the military to take over. And in a natural disaster, the military could well play a part, but not in policing duties - they could provide transport in an evacuation, for example, which is by no means a policing role. |
| Date | 00:58:56, October 21, 2005 CET | From | Protectorate Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | OOC: its a question of how policing duties are defined. Since under LibCom's proposal the military will not be out policing the streets or enforcing laws, it can be considered a valid definition. Where any part of it means under no circumstance will the military patrol streets or arrest citizens. It is impossible to enumerate every option in the game, thus it has been policy in Malivia to pick one that the party feels is the closest and refine in the bill's discription. You can argue which one is a better fit, but don't get annoyed if others feel differently. |
| Date | 01:04:29, October 21, 2005 CET | From | Protectorate Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | A budget to keep a police force large enough in every community, to suppress a possible riot in the extreme unlikely case one should errupt seems to be excessive waste. Our previous plan was not to keep a large ground force military anyway, thus we do not feel that the miltary is likely to be a threat to the rights of our citizens. |
| Date | 01:29:28, October 21, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | Then what use will the military be in a riot? In any case, the police should be mobile enough to get to where they're needed, especially since major riots are usually fairly predictable. If rioting is so widespread that the police can't contain it, then the government's clearly done something very wrong and deserves to be lynched by an angry mob. |
| Date | 00:20:09, October 22, 2005 CET | From | Malivia Democratic Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | " ic: If the civilian police force is incapable of handling a riot, then we need to increase their budget, not allow the military to take over. And in a natural disaster, the military could well play a part, but not in policing duties - they could provide transport in an evacuation, for example, which is by no means a policing role." Right here the Libcom party misses the basic point, that we , being in the national government, are not provided with the ability to affect how local communities fund their own police presence. We cannot increase or decrease funding on any local level, that is the perview of each local government. And I don't really care how much one may oppose any thought of the national military helping out.. the fact is that some disasters overwhelm the local communities completely.. no matter how well they are funded. And this isn't just about riots, its about evacuations as well, and feeding and sheltering internally displaced residents. You cannot expect a local police department to handle all that, even if it were to get 100% of the localities funds in question. Hence the need to keep the law as is. |
| Date | 02:16:25, October 24, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Martial Law Prevention Act |
| Message | As we've already explained, evacuating, feeding and sheltering people in case of disaster is not policing. We must have missed the bill that devolved responsibility for police funding to local communities - when was that passed? |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 21 | |||||
| no |
Total Seats: 214 | |||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 66 |
| Random fact: Real-life organisations should not be referenced in Particracy, unless they are simple and generic (eg. "National Organisation for Women" is allowed). |
| Random quote: "The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now." - Louis Proyect |