Yesterday, Friday 22 May, The Royal Screamer received an anonymous tip with evidence that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not properly set up the deposit chests for passport applications, and that at least seven applications were affected.
This comes in the wake of controversy surrounding the MoIA posting that candidates in the upcoming Parliament election only needed 4 hours of playtime in the last 30 days, despite requiring 6 hours, which led to the disqualification of two candidates who had met the former, incorrect requirement but not the latter, correct one.
Additionally, The Royal Screamer inquired to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) about whether any of the affected applications have been recovered; Thritystone, on behalf of the Ministry, stated that “[w]e were unable to confirm stolen passport applications were recovered, or the finished passports for that matter.” When asked whether any parliamentary candidates were affected by this, he said he believes that “staff have logs … on who clicked [on] the monarch NPC to start their app[lication]. Their app[lication] information would have been saved in server logs and time stamped.” Thus, we can infer that the MoFA has not recovered any of the affected applications or passports.
However, the question of the effect of this mishap on the Parliament election is a bit more complicated. It was confirmed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Electoral Secretary, ItsStormcrafter, that the only candidate disqualified for lack of a valid passport was Thritystone, leader of the Alexandria National Party (ANP), and an employee of the MoFA in charge of approving passport applications.
“I did submit a passport application, I put it in the chest, the[n] it got stolen. And [to be fair,] I was the one approving them so it’s kinda my fault but in the chaos I forgot to re-submit,” Thritystone told The Royal Screamer. He also clarified how this mistake happened: “The initial [deposit chest for submitting applications] was locked, but I also couldn’t access it, so I asked [ItsStormcrafter] to unlock it, which he apparently unlocked for everyone.”
The Royal Screamer will keep readers posted on how passport availability and this election kerfuffle develops.