Achipel

## *The August*

Achipel

**Achipel**, formally known as **The August Achipel**, and facetiously known as *"The God Emperor"*, is the head of state of the New West Indies who founded the region on March 7, 2018 and served as the first Secretary-General of the New West Indies until July 1st, 2018.

Achipel wrote the first and current Constitution of the New West Indies and thus laid the foundation of the New West Indies' administrative system. Having served as first Secretary-General until the first elections were called, Achipel also ran for the office as President of the General Assembly in June 2018 but lost to the Hon. Cymiopolis. Shortly afterwards, Achipel authored a General Assembly resolution to exclude the Founder from running for said office. However, the proposal was narrowly defeated.

## Founding the New West Indies

On March 7, 2018, Achipel founded the New West Indies region and authored the first version of the current Constitution of the New West Indies. In this original version, the executive and legislative branches of the New West Indies government were established, as well as the democratic electoral process that has shaped the New West Indies' political landscape until today.

Rather than founding a completely new region, Achipel had re-founded the New West Indies, as a region of the same name existed until around mid 2017, which he was also a member of for several months.

In an interview for the New West Indies Monthly Update, Achipel stated that the reason why he founded a new region was that he was getting more and more dissatisfied with the atmosphere and hostilities within another region, in which he is still known as *Khingan.* As Achipel did not overtly found a new region, the New West Indies still have no diplomatic ties to said other region.

On January 11, 2020, Achipel was inducted into the Order of Initiative (OIN) by the Rt. Hon. Karteria for the creation of the Constitution and developing the region's initial roleplay, as well as the Order of Harmony (OHY) for the creation of the regional roleplay map, its maintenance, numerous polls, and (at that time) unilateral recruitment for the New West Indies.

## Secretary-General

As the New West Indies did not have as many members to conduct an election in its nascent period, it was established via §15 of the Constitution that Achipel serves as 1st Secretary-General of the New West Indies until the first official elections were called, which eventually occurred in June 2018.

During his tenure, Achipel established the regional roleplay map, created the region's official Discord server and wrote the in-character history of how the New West Indies were founded. Furthermore, Achipel first started a recruitment program for the New West Indies, which led to an increasing number of nations within the New West Indies. Shortly after the region first surpassed 25-30 nations, Achipel resigned from his office as Secretary-General to call for the first democratic elections in the New West Indies' history.

Achipel's term of office as 1st Secretary-General of the New West Indies began on March 7 with the foundation of the region and ended on July 1, 2018. Having founded the region, Achipel is no longer eligible to run for the office as Secretary-General as per §15 of the Constitution.

## Legislative work

As of February 2, 2021, Achipel has authored or co-authored fourteen General Assembly resolutions, of which only one was defeated as it did not reach the required super-majority for constitutional amendments. This resolution (GAR#04: "Excluding the Founder from the GA Presidency") remains the only proposal defeated by the General Assembly. It was written after Achipel had run an unsuccessful campaign to become President of the General Assembly.

Until January 6, 2019, Achipel was the only nation to write and submit legislative proposals to the General Assembly floor. As such, the first seven resolutions to ever have been voted on were all authored by Achipel. Since then, Achipel given way to other General Assembly authors. The other General Assembly resolutions he has written since then are GARs 014, 018, 026, 028, 039 and 042, and 047. Most of them have been constitutional amendments aimed at ensuring a fully democratic system and granting basic rights to every nation in the New West Indies.

Achipel's efforts and legislative work were honored by the President of the General Assembly, the Hon. Reno Sheriffs Department, when Achipel was inducted into the Order of Consensus (OCS) on January 11th, 2020.

## Controversy

In December 2019, Achipel announced the drafting of a major proposal meant to overhaul the judicial system by adding a second, independent court to the judicial branch, the *Court of Final Appeal.* However, due to a lot of criticism from all government branches, he withdrew the proposal indefinitely.

After the election of the 6th Secretary-General in December 2020 had concluded, Achipel took it upon himself to verify the votes and declare the Rt Hon. Ventus Prime as winner of said elections after the then President of the General Assembly, the Est. Volirum, failed to do so for a week after the election poll had closed. Later, on December 25, 2020, following the former Secretary-General's failure to comply with established electoral procedures, Achipel also unilaterally postponed the election of the President of the General Assembly and opened the nomination period for said election. As a result thereof, the Hon. Reno Sheriffs Department filed state charges against both the Secretariat and the President of the General Assembly on grounds of electoral misconduct (cf. §1.III, GAR#27). During the trial of 20-12, *Reno Sheriffs Department v. New West Indies*, it was argued by the Region that the actions made by the Founder were "potentially unconstitutional". In its ruling, the High Court later found "it questionable that the Founder would seek to unilaterally administrate a new election while there is a lawful method of acquiring redress [...] [as] the State Code was created for a reason and that it must be utilized to remain effective, regardless of the potential convenience of ignoring it".

As part of the complaint filing for 20-13, *Reno Sheriffs Department v. New West Indies*, the Hon. Reno Sheriffs Department pointed out "suspicious behavior [of the Founder] because the President of the General Assembly is legally supposed to oversee the Secretary-General elections". However, the criminal charges for 20-13 were later dropped by the Hon. Reno Sheriffs Department following his election as President of the General Assembly in the election ordered by the High Court in its ruling on 20-12.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.nationstates.net/page=rmb/postid=42323268
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V1g0dDiYzyZiwxP-Rt\_yYbMBOkLpOpUtlxSHwpgHnO4/edit?usp=sharing
3. ↑ https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1485724
4. ↑ https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1494383