State Secretaries of Vekllei

Part of the government series of articles.

State Secretaries are the commissioned political officers of Vekllei, holding inter-ministerial authority for defined programmes by appointment of the Mandatory Ecclesia. They are the only officers who can introduce legislation that crosses ministerial boundaries. Since parties are outlawed and the ministries run on established law without a minister, a State Secretary is generally how politics reaches the federal government at all, and only for as long as the commission lasts.

Most commissions are practical, and some last only a few years. Gisèle Lubin’s Commonwealth Census commission ran from 2051 to 2054, and Rodrigo Morales spent six years on the Federal Railways. The standing Common Services commission of Hálfdan Joensen is unusual in having no end, since it is the cadre authority of the Frontier and Levy Service and the Revenue and Customs Service.

A commission can begin in three ways:

• Petition – by citizens, through a republic assembly and the First Secretaries of its region; for programmes in a single region.
• Civil service motion – by senior officers of the ministries; usual for railways, standards and other long work.
• Constitutional trigger – where the constitution requires it, as for any declaration of war; known in political slang as wrenching.

A commission ends:

• on certification of completion by the civil service;
• at the close of a fixed term set by the Mandatory Ecclesia at confirmation;
• on revocation by a two-thirds vote of the Ecclesia, mostly where a programme proved impossible or a State Secretary fell out with the ministries.

A State Secretary may be commissioned again, but always on a new scope.

Note

State Secretaries should not be confused with Commissioned Secretaries, who are delegates of the Mandatory Ecclesia with briefs inside the ministerial parliaments, or with the First Ministers who head the ministries. Interwork detachments also cross ministries, but they are civil service bodies and cannot introduce legislation.