Talk:De facto head of state

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[edit] Purpose of article

Is this article really necessary? Are there any "de facto heads of state" other than Governors-General? None are referred to in the article which suggests that there is no need for a new article.Homey 21:45, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Defacto means bogus folks. You see in 1931 the King opted out of the scam. No prime minister had any power to appoint a G.G., Mackenzie King Desparate to retain the power forged a letters patent with no approval of the King . Hence Canada is De facto...illegitimate! It is based upon a fraud and I tried to put that up but unscrupulous editors who apparently approve of the fraud and deception keep taking it down. [User owlmon@gmail.com December 12th 2006]
Yes it is as their is a plot to deceive folks by making use of that word and the editors seem quite angry when the true meaning of the word is added to the wimpy and misleading definitions offered..Their are no lawful heads of commonwealth State since 1931...Statute of Westminster....Only the King had power to appoint and he opted out in 1931...Since then no law exists to have the king appoint them again so it is called de facto...bogus!! The countries are corporations for expolitation and profit and went into receivership in 1933..Dejure is of God's law. De facto is bankers law...(137.186.43.144 (talk) 08:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC))

Seems some of the relatives of the Bankers are the editors of this site and deception is the game...Wake up folks your being conned,(137.186.43.144 (talk) 08:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC))June 11th 2008

Defacto means bogus folks. You see in 1931 the King opted out of the scam. No prime minister had any power to appoint a G.G., Mackenzie King Desparate to retain the power forged a letters patent with no approval of the King . Hence Canada is De facto...illegitimate! It is based upon a fraud and I tried to put that up but unscrupulous

editors who apparently approve of the fraud and deception keep taking it down. [User owlmon@gmail.com December 12th 2006]
A number of users repeatedly use the term to suggest that a de-facto head of state is a head of state. It is getting tedious constantly having to explain in article after article what the difference is. This article provides a link which does the explanation without endlessly having to repeat the definition. That is why it was created. FearÉIREANNImage:Ireland coa.png\(caint) 21:59, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


Keep the article, it describes what the "office" is, and what it does. Cannada is simply used as an example. If you want to figure out who the other de facto heads of state are for other commonwealth realms, do so and add it in. This page needs expansion, not deletion.-LittleBrother 5 August 2005 06:01 (UTC)

It appears that this VfD was never properly listed in accordance with Wikipedia:Deletion process. Further, the unpublicised vote produced no consensus to delete. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/De facto head of state for details. Bovlb 05:31:01, 2005-08-24 (UTC)

I added Eternal President of the Republic to the article, so it now has two different types of de facto heads of state. --Arctic Gnome 19:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whom

Following paragraph copied from User talk:Indefatigable

Re recent changes to de facto head of state: While the office can depending on context be written as Governor General or governor general, it can never be written as Governor general. If it appears at the start of the sentence, producing a capital for the first word, the second word is always capitalised. Half capitalisation for the post is an elementary capitalisation error. Also whomever is grammatically correct. Whoever is a version which is generally used in American English but regarded as semi-literate in other forms of English. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 22:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Capitalizing both parts of a hyphenated word because it's the first word of a sentence is a rule I've never heard before, but I'll accept your judgement. However, whomever happens to be ... is ungrammatical in all variants of English. Here, the pronoun is the subject of the verb happens, so it has to be in the nominative case: whoever. One wouldn't say "Her happens to be ...", but rather "She happens to be ...". See Who (pronoun). Indefatigable 23:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Whomever has been standard usage in British English, Hiberno-English and their variants since the 16th century. It has its origins in Old English and is widely used. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 00:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is standard and correct in its grammatical place, for example "He gives to whomever he sees." Here, whomever is the object of the verb sees. But when it's the subject of the verb, you have to use whoever: "He gives to whoever asks him." Any book on English grammar should back me up on this. Indefatigable 01:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] True de facto head of state

I acknowledge that it seems to be standard, but it seems to me very strange to call the governor general of Canada the "de facto head of state". It's only de jure that she's head (or even "vice-head") of anything; de facto she does whatever the PM tells her. The de facto head of state, then, is the prime minister. --Trovatore 04:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

The Prime Minister is the de jure head of government, which gives him more power than the head of state, but does not make him head of state. --Arctic Gnome 20:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
But de facto, he exercises the powers of the head of state (CinC of the armed forces, pardons, dissolving Parliament, etc). These are not head-of-government functions, but head-of-state ones. --Trovatore 20:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Except those are all powers of the Queen which are exercised de facto by the GG. --Arctic Gnome 04:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
No, they're not exercised de facto by the GG. The GG puts her name on it, but the PM tells her what to do. They're exercised de facto by the PM. --Trovatore 05:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The fact that the PM is telling her what to do reflects the fact that he is the head of government. If I may quote wikipedia's article on head of state: "His or her role generally includes personifying the continuity and legitimacy of the state and exercising the political powers, functions and duties granted the Head of State in the country's constitution." The PM does not personify continuity and legitimacy, the Queen and GG do, while the PM does the actual ruling of the country. While the PM can order the GG to declare war, the GG is still the CinC of the forces to whom they solute; the PM can request that parliament be dissolved, but in extreme circumstances it is the GG who makes the final call, like Byng did. To quote the article on head of government: "The Head of Government is the chief officer of the executive branch of a government", which the PM does to a tee. The GG is performing de facto the role that the constitution gives de jure to the Queen, and the PM is performing de facto the role that the constitution gives de jure to the Privy Counsel. The constitution says that the GG has to do what the PM tells her, so it ends up that the de facto head of government has de jure power over the de facto head of state. --Arctic Gnome 06:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The Queen and the GG have no de facto powers whatsoever, according to the usual meaning of de facto. You're misusing the term. --Trovatore 06:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I should maybe modify that a little. As you say, there are exceptions in very unusual cases ("reserve powers"). But de facto means "in practice", and in practice, reserve powers aren't used. --Trovatore 06:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I see what you're saying, and clearly the PM is the one who wields the de facto political power. However, if we follow the other articles' advice and use "head of state" to mean one who "personifies the continuity and legitimacy of the state", than the GG is in practice performing that duty in the name of the Queen. And if we take "head of government" to mean one who is "the chief officer of the executive branch of a government", than the PM is in practice doing that in the name of the Privy Counsel. My point is that the head of state is already a powerless position and legally doesn't have much power for the PM to be using de facto. The PM isn't in charge because he is using the head of state's constitutional power, he is in charge because he is using the privy council’s constitutional power. --Arctic Gnome 07:19, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:137.186.43.144's edits

The IP 137.186.43.144 keeps adding information that seems to violate NPOV, changing it each time they are warned about it. I was wondering whether anyone thinks there is some useful NPOV facts that can be salvaged from it:

In politics, a de facto head of state of a country or region is one who has assumed authority, regardless of whether by lawful, constitutional, or legitimate means; very frequently the term is reserved for those whose power is thought by some faction to be held by unlawful, unconstitutional, or otherwise illegitimate means, often by deposing a previous leader or undermining the rule of a current one. De facto leaders need not hold a constitutional office, and may exercise power in an informal manner.

For constructive interpretation and to effectively destroy editing attempts at vandalizing this definition, provided for truthful clarity, a de facto head of state oversees a government wherein all the attributes of sovereignty have, by usurpation, been transferred from those who had been legally invested with them to others, who, sustained by a power above the forms of law, claim to act and do really act in their stead.

--Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)