Chapter 335: Ma Jia's Rules of Order

“Cursing is one thing, but isn’t the newspaper still the only media outlet here in Lingao?” Meng Xian said. “At least as a form of leisure reading, it still has a market. Since it has a certain influence, it’s useful.”

“Find a few writers, pick a few high-quality girls for them, and have them write about the deeds of Guangzhou and Leizhou to help improve the public image of the dispatched stations,” Yan Maoda said. It started to rain outside, and the rain washed over the glass, blurring the view. The wind blew open an ajar window. Chen Tianxiong stood up and closed the window, then unexpectedly opened the door—the corridor was quiet, without a sound. Listening carefully, he could vaguely hear the voices of the waitresses downstairs, laughing and talking while they worked.

A strange expression flickered across Guo Yi’s face, but Yan Maoda didn’t seem to care. “Old Chen, don’t be so paranoid. We’re discussing something open and aboveboard. Is it beneficial to the Executive Committee to let some people with ulterior motives smear our dispatched stations all day long?”

Chen Tianxiong didn’t answer and sat down again. The topic of hiring writers and conducting public relations activities continued.

That day, according to the Western calendar, was January 12, 1630. The Guangzhou-Leizhou interest group was officially formed on this day. This group would later evolve into the “Guang-Lei Faction,” an important political faction in the Senate.

After careful consideration by the preparatory committee, the second general assembly of the transmigrators was finally “victoriously convened” on January 26, 1630. The venue was the open-air cinema in Bairen City, which had been simply arranged according to the needs of the meeting. The transmigrators sat in the shell-shaped auditorium. On the stage, instead of the traditional rostrum seating, there was only a speaker’s table with a microphone—no seats. The intention was to compress speaking time and avoid meaningless long speeches.

Directly opposite this speaker’s table were the seats for the meeting moderator and the recorder, as well as several empty seats with sound equipment, which were used for questioning.

The preparatory committee’s seats were on the side of the stage, responsible for all the conference affairs. This time, because it involved the internal conflicts and interests of the transmigrators, the Political Security General Bureau had cleared the field in Bairen City. All natives, regardless of how long they had served the Transmigration Group or how close their relationship was, were temporarily cleared out of the city.

According to the statistics of the preparatory committee, excluding the 2 who had died, the total number of surviving transmigrators, including children, was 513. There were also 8 unofficial transmigrators—those who were accidentally involved or had been kidnapped: the four members of the Ming family, Guo Yi, the two ATF agents, and Miss Mendoza, who had been kidnapped by the North American branch.

Among these 521 people, the preparatory committee stipulated that the children who came with their parents, although they enjoyed the same rights and benefits as their parents, did not have the right to make proposals or vote before the age of 18, and were not required to attend the meeting. However, as long as their parents agreed and provided necessary supervision, they could attend the meeting as observers.

Because the meeting would last for several days, even in Lingao, many key departments could not be left unattended. According to the resolution passed by the first general assembly, a general assembly was valid only if more than 80% of the transmigrators participated. Therefore, before the meeting, in addition to those dispatched personnel who could not return and had provided a power of attorney to someone they trusted to attend the meeting on their behalf, each department also compiled a list of personnel on duty during the meeting. This group of people gathered in advance for a small meeting to discuss the various topics and proposals of the meeting. Then, based on the compatibility of their political views, they freely formed ten-person election groups and elected a representative to attend the meeting to express their opinions.

This kind of representative did not have the right to vote. Ma Jia believed that as long as they were in Lingao, they could vote after the meeting—there would be minutes of the meeting, and it would be fine to decide how to vote after reading the minutes. It would just delay the announcement of the results by a few hours.

The meeting adopted a secret ballot for voting on various issues. To this end, a ballot-counting team had been elected at the preparatory meeting to supervise the voting and counting.

The number of valid votes for each vote had to be more than 90% of the attendees. General proposals adopted a simple majority principle, as long as the affirmative votes exceeded 51%. Personnel elections and major decisions adopted an absolute majority principle.

Ma Jia spent the most effort on formulating the rules of the meeting. The so-called general assembly was essentially a parliament, and how this parliament could ensure the quality of discussion was something that probably no transmigrator had experience with.

Ma Jia had seen all kinds of behaviors when Chinese people discussed problems: either they went off on tangents and the discussion was irrelevant; or it was a “one-man show,” where the right to speak was monopolized by leaders, experts, and talkative people; or the discussion was very heated but never reached a conclusion; or it was a barbaric discussion, where they seized on a word or a loophole in someone’s speech and made personal attacks. These problems had to be especially avoided.

Of course, this had little to do with the so-called national character of the Chinese people. In the early European and American parliaments, similar problems were also common, to the extent that the British Parliament had to legislate to prohibit members from carrying weapons into the chamber to prevent them from drawing swords over political differences. To solve these maladies, a complete and effective set of meeting rules had to be established. Ma Jia naturally thought of introducing Robert’s Rules of Order. This was a set of meeting rules derived from the rules of the British Parliament, which was widely used in European and American countries. More importantly, many enterprises in China had also adopted these rules to some extent, so there was a certain basis for popularization and application.

Robert’s Rules has a whole set of methods to avoid barbaric discussion: it stipulates that the moderator is neutral, everyone has a chance to speak, and it specifies the number of times each person can speak; it requires both sides of a debate to raise their hands and stand up to address the moderator, and not to question each other; the rules also prohibit extending the session, demanding to speak, and interrupting when others are speaking.

When discussing problems openly, as long as it is not a rubber-stamp parliament, it will not appear very harmonious and united. A war of words is the minimum. Some lower-level parliaments even resort to physical violence over political views. As for the Chinese people, Ma Jia had not seen many heated debates in reality, but he had seen discussions on BBS—the viciousness and acrimony that dared not be expressed in reality were all spewed out in this virtual space.

It is conceivable what a public discussion would turn into in this new time and space where the transmigrators had almost no scruples. Without a set of hard and fast rules to restrict it, Ma Jia had no doubt that there would be barbaric discussions. Personal attacks, insulting ancestors, and even fistfights would probably be common scenes.

To avoid barbaric discussion, the most important rule in the rules of order is that one cannot question others’ motives in the name of morality. There is a whole set of theories behind this: first, motives cannot be proven; second, the meeting is to review a certain matter, not a certain person, and questioning and exposing motives is a deviation from the topic; third, self-interest is a common human trait, and pursuing maximum benefit without harming others is not excessive.

Ma Jia believed that this was the most important point that the Lingao Senate must pay attention to when holding meetings. Other issues, such as going off-topic during a meeting, although serious, were not fatal. As for the most common phenomenon in meetings, the “one-man show” of leaders and experts, and the phenomenon of everyone following the crowd, “just watching,” and “hugging the thick thigh,” would not be popular before the political landscape of this time and space was established—everyone was willing to fight for their own interests when there was no danger.

It was precisely because the power structure had not yet been established that timely implementation of a set of systems could fully guarantee the internal democracy of the Transmigration Group. When the power structure stabilized and the vested interest groups grew stronger, it would be very difficult to implement this set of systems. At that time, it would probably be impossible to make the vested interest groups spit out what they had swallowed without using violent means—and the use of internal violence would be the beginning of the end.

But the full Chinese version of Robert’s Rules of Order was nearly 600 pages long, a veritable tome, and the content involved was very extensive. The rules were too many and too complex. Not only would the attendees have no interest in following them, but even the person presiding over the meeting would probably not be able to remember them all. They had to be simplified to adapt to the environment.

After discussion, the preparatory committee simplified these rules of order into a set of simple meeting rules, which were later called “Ma Jia’s Rules of Order.” In these rules, first, the meeting had a moderator. This moderator was specifically responsible for announcing the meeting system, maintaining order in the venue, and executing the meeting process, while also distributing the right to speak—this was one of the most important powers of the meeting moderator. All attendees had to raise their hands before speaking. No one was allowed to casually interject with “Let me first talk about the significance of this matter” or “Let me add a few points.” Whoever raised their hand first had priority to speak, but the speaker had to get permission from the meeting moderator before speaking.

When speaking, one must stand up and go to the speaker’s podium to speak, otherwise the speech would be invalid. Each person’s speaking time was limited to 2 minutes per turn, timed from the moment they arrived at the speaker’s podium. However, the total time from when they were granted permission to speak to the end of their speech had to be within 3 minutes—Ma Jia had made a precise calculation: it would take about 40 seconds for an attendee to walk from the farthest seat in the venue to the speaker’s podium at a normal pace, to prevent anyone from using this distance to delay the meeting.

When the time was up, the meeting moderator had the right to interrupt the speech immediately. Once the moderator interrupted the speech, the speaker had to obey unconditionally and could not occupy the podium or continue to speak at the speaker’s podium. Overtime speeches were invalid. To ensure the effectiveness of this rule, the microphone on the speaker’s podium had a switch connected to the meeting moderator’s seat, and the moderator could turn off the microphone’s amplifier at any time.