I have kept my true thoughts and feelings hidden about this entire affair. I see no reason to continue. Public ire can not get any worse. Nor do I have the will to constrain myself any longer. And no one else has hidden their contempt for the Conclave either.
When I agreed to become an Arbiter, back a long time ago in Atlae’s DMs, I agreed to follow the Arbiter’s duties to render the most accurate verdict possible. I was voted into the Conclave because it was assumed that I am honest and will live up to my duties. I did honour my agreement, and I will continue to defend the verdict I gave. When the verdict was published, I had to fend off the tidal wave of backlash it immediately generated, by both the Citizens and the Magisterium. I did that, and I will continue to defend myself.
Not once did I ever act illegally. Not once did I render a verdict that was inaccurate. And not once did I ever interpret the comments made by an enraged mob against the Conclave in bad faith. I made the verdict and every single time someone tried to argue with it, I made a good faith attempt to defend it.
The Conclave, as the region’s judiciary, is powerful by default. We are the sole interpreters of the Concordat and laws. We are the sole judges of the Citizens. And we are expected to act honestly and to our duties as bound within the Concordat. If you don’t want or like this, then abolish the Conclave.
No one reads the verdict. For all people’s confidence in their flagrantly false opinions and disreputed and arbitrary attempts to find a different interpretation of the repeal and replace, not one person I have argued with has even bothered to read the verdict or the repeal and replace clause. Read the verdict. Read that clause. All people have done is give it a cursory examination, panicked over the effects, then gone on a warpath to spill Conclave blood. The amount of times I had to clarify that this was not an amendment but a repeal and replace is absurd. It is a repeal and replace, we said that it is in the verdict, we clarified why, but clearly no one reads. And because of it, the Conclave gets ripped into over the lack of attention to detail of others. Our verdict was carefully written. Pay attention. People’s ignorance to what we made clear is not our fault.
And stop making mockeries of the English language by arbitrarily redefining words because the common definitions have become inconvenient to accept. “Repeal”, “replace”, and “amendment” aren’t words we made up on the fly. Words have meanings that have to be considered. So, seriously, stop.
The sheer number of borderline treasonous and dishonest messages and actions over the verdict is truly mind-numbing. Trying to force the second Concordat to stay by ignoring the verdict, arguing for a coup, or by the force of residents that supposedly gave us Arbiters our powers and can supposedly strip them away, whatever this argument means, is all borderline treason. If this was done in any other context, people would be on trial or have charges filed against them. This is a fact.
And who advised the Praesidium to consider forcefully taking the region hostage because we rendered the accurate verdict? We did our legal duty. We were within the bounds of the law. Why doesn’t the Praesidium release their discussions about this in the public interest to how they drew the conclusion that they had the power in the beginning? We intend on releasing our discussions, I argued for the disclosure of discussions before a draft verdict was even decided on. Right now, we are waiting on Halley’s approval before making it public. What’s got the Praesidium stuck up? Or is the Praesidium throwing out a comment about holding the region hostage less of a problem than the Arbiters doing their duty? Privately, I confessed to Wallenburg that I feared a coup against the Conclave for its verdict. I am vindicated for believing that now that Amom has said that the Viziers almost did seize the region. We acted with good faith. We acted to reduce public confusion with this. We have done what we can and what we should as Arbiters. Yet still we become public enemies. Throughout all of this, only a handful of people chose not to advocate for something borderline treasonous, and the bulk of this minority was the Conclave.
I’m frankly sick of being cast as a devil. Getting called a “lawyer asshole”, corrupt, treasonous, stupid, and being accused of couping the region all the whilst protecting myself from legal repercussions is nothing but toxic attacks on my character and projections of what people have advocated for themselves.
Long before a first draft was even made, I asked Em to step and use admin powers to keep the situation as it is. Later, I asked them again. Both times Em reiterated that the admin team will not step in, that this is for the government, not the community. So where do people get the notion that we should be rendering inaccurate verdicts because of the community? We aren’t admin, I asked admin to step in, and they refused. Do I know better than admin? This entire line of reasoning is completely nonsense since it asks us to abandon our duty as Arbiters and take up the responsibilities of admin.
Next, the same people who put out these messages about how we are dishonest or corrupt or couping are themselves advocating for corrupt measures, and being generally dishonest in their interactions. For example, Serge has consistently used his pin powers in #government-plaza to make politically motivated pins and some people have argued for nominating a different set of Arbiters that will agree to overturn our verdict. The former I find to be a misuse of Discord permissions granted by being a Community Mod, and the latter is plainly political corruption. Where were Serge’s pins when we Arbiters consistently made rebuttals and refutations? Why were there politically motivated pins done with Community Mod powers to begin with? We were exhausting ourselves making the same points ad nauseam all the whilst these points were pinned for everyone to reuse and recycle whenever they felt like. We have the benefit of being the only Conclave nominated without this judicial review in mind or memory. We were neutral when we came into this as was everyone else who voted us in as this issue was never brought up. We were not nominated on the basis of our opinions regarding this, as I’m sure a future Conclave will be, given the contempt shown towards honesty in regard to dealing with the Conclave.
We never interpreted people’s words in bad faith. We made good faith discussions on clearly bad faith attempts. Was it foolish of us? Yes, clearly it was, since these people were already itching for retribution. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So before people bash us over supposedly acting beyond our powers, over being corrupt, over being treasonous, over being assholes, why don’t they look at what they’ve said.
Now the Magisterium is going to enact punitive retribution against the Conclave for doing its job. The same body of Magisters who made borderline treasonous and bad faith comments about ways to ignore the judicial review. Make no mistake, this is the Conclave’s punishment. We exposed the Magisterium’s mistake, we undid them, and the Magisterium is now going to enact “reforms” and “checks and balances” which are nothing but euphemisms and thin veils to hide their anger at our verdict. The Magisterium’s discussions are shams. The Conclave is going to be made to suffer for ruling accurately. Serge’s current proposal is a complete farce. All regular logic is going out of the window as is the rule of law. The Magisterium is setting itself up for parliamentary sovereignty where it can forcefully legalize any illegal action it takes and the Conclave is powerless against it. People are ignoring the non-ex post facto issue willingly and deliberately. Even if Serge’s farce of an amendment passes, by non-ex post facto, we can still make a ruling. The powder keg this region sleeps on thanks to the Magisterium’s mistake remains. At least until the Magisterium kills off non-ex post facto next which I predict it will because owning up to its mistake and fixing it has proven too burdensome for it. I predict that the Magisterium will “solve” the non-ex post facto “problem”, a “problem” created by illegal Magisterium actions, by forcing the Conclave to accept that non-ex post facto only applies when it doesn’t inconvenience the Magisterium, as it does right now.
Do your duties. The Magisterium is trying to make a puppet out of the Conclave by enacting punishments for what it considers to be bad behavior and by some Magisters flat out suggesting and supporting the politically motivated replacements of Arbiters to force the Conclave to rule a verdict that the Magisterium did nothing wrong. Even some Viziers, one of whom is an Arbiter, are joining this dog pile and arguing for an atrociously powerful Praesidium that absorbs the Conclave. The Magisterium can enact whatever form of revenge it wants. It is the height of dishonesty to make a mistake, have it exposed, and then punish the people who exposed it. The Conclave has a clean conscience that it upheld its duties, acted honestly, and legally.