Thank-you Per Speaker. I am somewhat surprised the election commission allocated us 7 seats when we only had 6 candidates on the slate, but who am I to argue. As I can't take a seat, that means we need to quickly recruit two people willing to join our party and serve in the GA. One possibility is Monsieur Dumont-Moreau, whose paper endorsed me. I had in mind appointing him to MESA, as he had some good ideas for the sporting portfolio. The two other prominent independents are Former President Amric Al'Aeshir and Publisher / Coffee Entreprenuer Michael Lundgren. It might be difficult to get either one of them to accept, but we could try.
I don't really see any possibilities from defectors from the other parties, although I perhaps we can find someone. We are likely to be better off looking for some newly arrived on the politcal scene activitist instead.
As for the cabinet, my initial thoughts were:
MTIA: myself, as I will want to conduct the diplomacy personnally
MDIS: Frans Truman, who has experience as deputy MDIS
MIDA: Josephus Sergei (one from the left)
MESA: Jacques Moreau-Dumont (an independent, with some ideas for the sporting portfolio)
MERL: Someone from CUE (one from the right)
For the last one, I would like to have PG Talbott, but he has there lone GA seat, and doesn't like to serve in both a ministry and a cabinet post at the same time. Perhaps he will give up his seat to someone further down the list, and accept a post.
If someone else from our party wants to do double duty and have a cabinet post and a GA seat please let me know and will modify the list. Frans Truman, we understand your reluctance to serve in both ways, so we understand that you will not play an active part in the debate in the GA. That is fine, as long as you show up to vote when needed, which I am sure you will. I understand that Dagmar FitzHerbert will be operating in much the same manner, given her duties with the Eutopian National Trust.
I will also need to pick a Vice President, who cannot also serve in the GA. Thus, naming any of our MGA's makes our problem of filling the seats worse. With that in mind, if we have 6 actively voting GAs, we can pass any bill or constitutional amendment, so temporarily having one seat unfilled might not be a problem, as long as the courts don't take the seat away from us. Thus, it might be better for me to temporarily delay naming a Vice President until we get our GA seats in order, or temporarily name one of the cabinet members who is not from our party as VP, and them reassign the job when we have more people able to hold GA seats.
Please let me know your thoughts on all this before I make anything public, and thanks again for running a good campaign.