President of the Senate

Throughout the early Expanded Universe novels, and especially the old WEG sourcebooks, it often mentioned the title of 'President of the Senate'. This was often interchanged with 'Chief of State'. Then the prequels came along. Episodes I - III, and along with the Expanded Universe material set in that era, had the title 'Chancellor' as the Chief Executive of the Republic.

I remember reading retcons a few years ago that mentioned that all titles are valid, and most importantly, concurrent. For example, Palpatine is both the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, and President of the Senate. Even though the opening crawl of Episode I mentions a Congress, in fact, the form of government of both the Old and New Republics are unicameral.

I saw recently that someone created a discussion topic centered around the fact that there is no official 'Vice President' in either the Old or New Republics. As an analogy to real life, one of the main important roles of the Vice President of the United States is that he is also the President of the Senate, and acts as a tie-breaker in case of a tied Senate vote.

In real life, with the USA, there are checks and balances with the three branches of Government, perhaps this is also the case in the GFFA. Perhaps Palpatine, et al. whilst Chancellor of the Republic, he is also ceremonially the President of the Senate, and only acts when casting a tie-breaking vote. This is pretty logical, well, especially in the Old Republic of Palpatine's era, as the Senate had 1,024 members - an even number which could lead to a tied vote. Anyone know how many Senators there are in the New Republic or the Galactic Alliance?

 

The Old Republic in Palpatine's time had way more then 1,024 representatives considering the fact that the petition of 2,000 was a minority of Senators, although a large one. I think I've heared that there were something like 5,000 representatives...

 

The Old Republic in Palpatine's time had way more then 1,024 representatives considering the fact that the petition of 2,000 was a minority of Senators, although a large one. I think I've heared that there were something like 5,000 representatives...

There were 1,024 voting Senators.

However, Senatorial delegations also included Junior members, ie Jar Jar for the Naboo delegation, Ainlee Teem and Baskol Yeesrim for Malastare, etc.

 

New Rebellion also had junior senators alongside their primary world reps. Spectre of the Past said a senator represented 200-250 allotted worlds.

 

And aren't there a 1,000,000 inhabited worlds in the GFFA? Hmmm... do the math!

 

You're thinking all those worlds must be New Republic members at that time.

 

No, I am not. However, going my old WEG material, the New Republic at around the time of the Thrawn crisis had control of at least 50% of the galaxy. So, that is at least 500,000 planets under the control of the New Republic. So, if there is a Senator for at least 250 worlds, then that is 2,000 Senators. I suppose that *is* getting closer to Old Republic numbers...

 

Let me explain . . .

4yrs after Endor COPL said 600,000 members.
12yrs after Endor Before the Storm said 80k.

Massive Imperial attacks in the interim, of course. Numbers can change over the years; and there's no law saying how Zahn counted his senatorial territory means senators also oversaw 200 sectors at any stage of the New Rep. Further more, as Before the Storm;Leia says, the Rep was an alliance of people, not worlds, when asked how a representative of just 60,000 Alderaanians can lead a pangalactic republic.

 

It's interesting that the NR allows for Senatorial representation for groups lacking their own (original) world - both Alderaan and Caamas, for instance. My guess is that the legal precedent was the original Declaration of the New Republic, which had signatories representing peoples not yet members.
Garm Bel Iblis, IIRC, became the Senator of Corellia when he joined the NR, and since the Corellian Sector maintained its independence to at least 9 AE, he couldn't be a *direct* representative.
Which begs the questions (a) how were they elected in the case of non-member(expatriate vote?) and (b) how other worlds/sectors felt about virtually wiped-out populations having equal representation to hundreds of worlds...

 

Specific to the structure of the Republic (which I'm starting to envision as a French-esque type thing on it's Nth iteration after the various crises), I've always envisioned that Palpatine consolidated some different legal titles "for the duration of the Emergency." IOW, someone has an accident or is assassinated by the Separatists or what not and he "temporarily" assumed those duties. Up until some point either just before or just after Geonosis, he gets voted the powers analogous to the Roman Republic's Dictator.

IIRC, WEG (SW Sourcebook ?) makes reference that a sector was originally something like 50 inhabited worlds (presumably above a minimum point of self-sustenance and not anything like outpost-type) which could contain any number of astrophysical space. Naturally in the Core and other more populous areas these would be much smaller astrophysical regions than towards the Outer Rim.

In any case, given Valorum's introduction of Palpatine as the "Senator from the sovereign sytem of Naboo" or however it went,one could postulate about numerous "non-sovereign" systems under the jursidiction of their more enfranchised neighbors, which makes the references to the million worlds and what not quite oblique to the numbers of representatives. Though the Republic towards the time of TPM appears to resemble European-style Parliamentary system, it's not surprising to see US style elements incorporated. Such as a semi-arbitrary limit to 1024 "Sovereign" voting senators so that the interests of the minority of members aren't entirely ignored by the majority. Since the Republic is apparently unicameral in it's highest governmental body, it could be structured with internal checks and balances to partially replicate the effects that a bicameral structure could have provided... Until the Sith foster the corruption and bring down from within what they failed to do from without.

EDIT: And I'd see the New Republic only attempting to repair the damage done by Palpatine, though hindered by their myopic paranoia causing them to overly weaken the Executive.

 

Well, Chandrila and the entire Seswenna Sector, for instance, were controlled by Republic governors during the time of the Old Republic; yet they both were represented by senators.

I figured Valorum intorducing Palpatine as the "Senator from the sovereign sytem of Naboo" was nothing more than someone today introducing the "Senator from the great state of New York," for instance.