Why Rolo Won the Election...and what the heck are we going to do next?

Day 1,293, 11:39 • Published in Canada Canada • by Plugson

Actual full title:

"Why Rolo Won the Election...and what the heck are we going to do next?
(an assortment of conspiracy theories and misguided attempts to rationalize a rather surprising turn of events)"


--Quagmire by Nalini

I’m calling the election despite there being another 13 hours to go. What made me come to this conclusion was reading Jacobi’s shout: “Just voted for Rolo: If we're going to hell anyways, might as well see what the devil can do.”

I have no idea what the devil can do. He has demonstrated keen insight with his commentaries and have heard he possesses a strong knowledge of the economy and war module (going by hearsay on that one, since proof would be difficulty to obtain) On th other hand, he was an inactive CP that was illegally impeached, stole a huge treasury out to spite that decision, and has made it his mission to manipulate elections and fuddle battles (well, only a few times that I can recall) in order to remain a constant thorn in our side. Did we deserve all that trouble for jumping the gun on his impeachment? I doubt it, yet what we are receiving now in the election is deserved, I would argue. Here are some of my thoughts on why.


1) All the candidates are actually Project Mayhem affiliates

I’m fairly sure Rolo is. Isn’t that the rumour about Muglack? I know Adasko/John Cleese ran a “Project Mayhem” article when he stole the WGC org and messed with an official Govt. Org. newspaper just a couple days before the real mayhem started September ’10. I see Aeriala is still shouting that he his the ATO vote, which makes me believe he is intentionally splitting the vote. And I don’t like the look of Mr. Rock’s avatar, but we wouldn’t want to judge by appearances, now would we? Nevertheless, it is possible that this election is the result of an orchestrated Mayhem uprising to undo all that forum-izing which has dominated eCan politics and policy.


2) eCanadians are fed up and have a secret death wish

June has provided us with a double whammy on the same day. Rolo gets elected and Sweden is set to sweep through Scotland into the rest of eCanada. After a lacklustre May and poor showing by the qualified CP candidates, people want someone who will put them out of their ‘divided-we-fall” misery. Those with survival instincts have already begun to abandon the sinking boat (au revoir, SpockPQ and Roger Griswald).


3) Foreign PTOers are stuffing the Rolo ballot box

The voter count will be rather high this election (already at 560 with more than half the day to go), higher than it has been in months despite our flatlined increase in population. As Sweden prepares for the invasion of eCanada, secret PTO agents of ONE are propping up Rolo to soften us up for the invasion of North America. Word has it Tahmassee is a Hungarian codename, too.


4) None of the other candidates tried hard enough

Muglack put out better campaigns in the past. It’s likely he expected this early leg-work to spill over into this campaign. Aeriala’s “2 Lame Ducks” platform may not have been off to a good start, either. Will we bother discussing what Cleese and Rock did? Rolo garnered popular support shortly before the election that led to a “Brown Wave” shitstorm that solidified his victory (hmm, that imagery is a bit of an oxymoron). Everyone knew Muglack deserved the win but couldn’t be bothered to find out why, so just voted for the person who was ‘trending’ in the media and shouts the day before.


5) Let’s blame Kazuo LeBlanc, "why not"

As the popular catch-phrase of the day goes, “Why not.” Kazuo has been the butt of all the recent blame over what is wrong with eCanada. You might even blame him for the failed RW war that would have blocked Sweden in Scotland (did people know what the battle orders were and would have been enough to defeat Alfagrem?). It is my pet theory that the LePew series (inspired as a parody of LeBlanc's own satire) gave Rolo the extra exposure to boost is PR image for the current election.

What is apparent is that Muglack should have won the election in May so that he could have carried his momentum from May into the Swedish-Rolo crisis we now face in June. However, the vote was split back then as it was now (Cypher Rahl-May and Aeriala-June took votes that would have given us a‘safe’ winner). The divided blocks have both times let in the feared CP candidate. Heck, let’s blame these vote-splitters, too. Let’s blame the apathetic lulzers, radical militarists, misguided revisionists, poorly informed clickers, and “boy-in-a-hermetic-bubble” Government. Yes, blame Canada. If you all thought Rolo was a real threat, then why didn’t you organize a veritable ATO action plan? Seems like you let this happen. Maybe you secretly wanted it.


...and what the heck are we going to do next?

So what will happen come June 6th? We have at least 4 days of a Rolo Administration before an impeachment can be proposed (Gherk’s impeachment proposal helped Rolo secure an extra couple days). Addy has proposed we grant Rolo IRC and forum access. Sounds crazy right? After all, the laws of eCanada state that a CP can be impeached if he has been convicted of crimes by the Supreme Court of eCanad (a court now rendered paralyzed by a lack of quorum – one Justice stepped down today to leave only 2 remaining). It would be crazy to grant access to Rolo when his court conviction clearly says that he cannot receive it. Yet, we are facing invasion, the courts are currently inoperable, there is a malaise against forum roleplaying, and we just voted in the biggest criminal mastermind we have. Stranger things could happen.

For me, Rolo’s election raises some interesting gameplay issues and makes for relevant “roleplay vs game-mechanics debate” (btw, those terms are misleading and are generally used to mean many different things at once). I’d like to paste a comment I made in the article “Give Role-play the Finger and Vote Rolo” to illustrate that the real issue we now face is not whether we can trust Rolo right now. We have more practical issues to consider, like how the Legislative and Executive can operate together if Congress decides not to immediately impeach Rolo:

“Electing Rolo as CP does raise some interesting questions on how the in-game powers of a CP relate to forum and IRC powers. Rolo has access to neither, so will he be granted forum/IRC masking to do his job before his inevitable impeachment or will we accept that Rolo will have to all his work at a distance from the forum activity?

I suspect that a CP can click the right buttons without needing to delegate via the forum. Yet, the division between the Executive's in-game powers and the Legislative's reliance on the forum does raise an interesting gameplay situation. If Rolo does in fact want to do a good job as CP and is able to get it done, it would say a lot about how forum/IRC creations relate to in-game actions...that is assuming Rolo decides to manage the Swedish war-front appropriately. ”

You see, the legal process that prevents Rolo from fully functioning as a President, with proper IRC and forum access, is now in a state of paralysis itself. Do we stubbornly stick with the laws we have created and deal the next 4 days and hope an impeachment ‘remedies’ the situation (how is that for decomcratic process, huh)? Or, do we throw in the towel on our laws by giving Rolo a chance to perform the duties he was elected for?

This is the real debate we should be deciding in the next 24-48 hours before the impeachment button becomes available again.

Stick with it
or
Try something different

It’s a question worth considering. Does an in-game election and war crisis trump a socially constructed set of laws on a forum? We’ll have to let Congress and the Forum Admin Team be the judge of that. The courts can have no role to play in this right now.