posted
Indeed, there was never any hint of a voting process in ST4. THe only person with a real say was the bald man in the podium, the "Mr President" who may or may not have been President of the UFP.
I doubt there were separate "Council Member" and "Spectator" boxes in the chambers. There were high-ranking officers and lowly noncoms distributed quite evenly across the benches, between civilian-clad humans and aliens. I'd think many Starfleeters would be interested in being spectators in the trial, while those other people present may either have had a beef with Kirk, may have bene worried about Klingon reaction, or may simply have wanted to monitor the legal aspects of the process.
The actual decisionmaking probably took place somewhere else entirely, since the only person in the chambers who actually *knew* the verdict and sentence seemed to be "Mr President". Everybody else was quite surprised.
posted
Yeah, and Nichelle Nichols is credited as Uhuru.
Perhaps "Federation President" should be read like "Klingon Guard"? That is, the guy is a guard who is a Klingon, instead of guarding Klingons; similarly, the other guy is the President of the Committee for Determining Appropriate Punishment for Renegade Heroes, and just happens to be a Fed by citizenship. :-P
The President is voted in by the council, which is made up of representatives from colonies, member worlds and other interest groups.
The President is voted in by the council, which is made up of representatives from colonies, member worlds and other interest groups.
The council has power over Federation wide decisions and makes and implements policy based upon requirement.
Second Strata: Planetary Governments. As said by the holodoctor the Federation is an alliance of planets that works together in all respects for their mutual benefit. Therefore it is logical to conclude that each planet has it's own government and ambassadors from those planets are part of the Federation Council.
Each planet must adhere to certain humanitarian, rules etc but apart from that it can run it's culture along it's own lines. This also goes for colonies.
Here's where it gets interesting. Do the colonies of any given race get council representation seats or are they spoken for by the homeworld?
For example, if earth has 50 colonies do they come under the jurisdiction of Earth, not the Fed council? In addition to this, if a group of 3 billion humans moved to a new planet that does not necessarily mean that planet would automatically become a member state of the Federation (if they succeeded from the earthgov). They would have to pass the required tests to join and get their own seats on the council and their own government recognized. (A theory).
Starfleet comes in as the military force of the Federation, though each planet is responsible for internal security, and their own ground forces.(Or so it may be, we just don't know). Each planet must also contribute to starfleet with technology, resources, manpower etc etc. (As ground troops, or anything else). For my take the parts of starfleet we have seen are those run by humans. We know that there are entire sections of starfleet that don't have humans. Mixed race ships etc aren't necessarily the norm.
Third Strata: Regional Planetary Governments and Colonies are run via the system of the homeworld, whatever that may be
Printer-friendly view of this topic
