News Media of Istkalen
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Nation: Polling 5/3-6/3
Party Preference (+/- 5/2-6/2)
Communist Party (left-wing, in gov't formation): 20,1% (-7,0)
Republican Syndicalist Party (syncretic): 15,2% (+6,8)
National Republican Party (right-wing, in gov't formation): 12,6% (+6,4)
Agrarian Union (left-wing, in gov't formation): 12,1% (+6,3)
Social Democratic Party (left-wing): 10,4% (-7,1)
Radical Democratic Party (center): 9,5% (NEW)
Statebuilding Party (center to center-left, in gov't formation): 8,1% (-10,2)
Farmer-Green Alliance (center-right to right-wing): 5,9% (-4,7)
Union Party (right-wing to far-right, in gov't formation): 5,1% (-)
other: 1,0% (-)by camp
the Left (Communists + Agrarians): 32,2% (-0,7)
the Liberals (Social Democrats + Radical Democrats): 19,9% (+2,4)
the Right (Farmer-Greens, Statebuilders, Republican Syndicalists, National Republicans, Union): 46,9% (-1,7)Government Approval
- approve: 87,3%
- disapprove: 10,2%
- no opinion: 2,5%
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Republic
Ikrat promises "corporativist and social republic," rule modeled on "Lunon and Primo de Rivera"
Elizabeth Ikrat, both leader of the Communist Party and Istkalen's new and controversial prime minister, delivered her inaugural speech yesterday morning, detailing her plans for the country.
In the tradition of the progressive left, she dedicated her government to the "forgotten poor," promising to defend and invest in Istkalen's lowest two classes - its "manual laborers," a class of people for whom labor is theoretically illegal completely, and its "self-dislocated farmers," a group composed of those born in rural areas who illegally moved to the cities and were, as punishment, deprived of the vast majority of their legal and economic rights - in order to make their conditions, legal and material, equal to those of the majority.
In a less orthodox vein, however, she appeared to plot the path to this equality through the thoroughly middle-class workers' associations, calling for them to "dominate the Republic," praising them as "the organs of material and social progress" and the "future engine of an economic socialization both moral and literal," and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, taking the historically radical-right position of demanding a corporatist reform of state, society, and economy with them as base.
"The driving purpose of my government," she proclaimed, "what has been the driving force of all progressives in this country since the revolution of the 18th of April, what is the surest path to true and firm equality and liberty for the Istkalenic people, is the quick establishment of a corporativist and social republic: a government of the people, built upon the workers' associations, concerned with the maintenance of the social welfare, of justice and equity at all turns."
Ikrat further veered into eccentricity by simultaneously claiming inspiration for her ideal state from the far-left Lunon, the founder of the original iteration of the UNSR, and the right-wing Miguel Primo de Rivera, who ruled Spain autocratically in the 1920s.
"Our models," she said, "are Lunon and Primo de Rivera. We shall go forth, as they did, in establishing national progress, national unity, national justice; in overturning and reforming and building until we have made our Istkalen a nation of plenty, of great and common prosperity."
Ikrat's words were not necessarily a deviation from the line of the Istkalenic Communist Party, which has long been close to similar syncreticism in its endorsement of many aspects of the Istkalenic economic system - seen by more orthodox Marxists as a form of petty-bourgeois or conservative socialism - as progressive and communistic.
They were, nevertheless, deeply unusual and strange in terms of the extremity of the melding of right and left they suggested; with them, Ikrat became the first Communist figure in Istkalen to openly call the workers' associations progressive, and almost certainly the first person of left-wing inclination since the 1930s - perhaps of any inclination, anywhere - to simultaneously praise the Lunon and Primo de Rivera dictatorships as ideal.
However, though unusual, they were not necessarily unexpected. With the government being composed of parties from both the far-right and far-left, the development of unusual syntheses was almost certainly a necessity in negotiation - and thus one in actual policy and its presentation.
How the creation of Ikrat's "corporativist and social republic" will proceed in practice remains to be seen.
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Republic
An interview with Katharina Beck
Katharina Beck is an aberration. She is an ardent Women's Committee-er, and yet also a staunch National Republican; a young and university-educated activist, and yet also the most prominent leader of the party with the oldest average age and lowest average level of education in Istkalen; a "political dinosaur," according to her colleagues, and yet also one of the most popular and electorally successful politicians in Istkalen.
Now set, joined by influential trade unionist Riina Kruus, to become the co-leader of the National Republicans in the wake of the resignation of Kaisa Malk and Grete Reiner, she promises a "political renewal" just as unusual as she is: a "return," she claims, to the syncretic history of her party, to "progressive conservatism" and "democratic anti-parliamentarianism."
Our political correspondent, Kestalas Milresile, now interviews her in hopes of getting to understand her - and her future plans - better.
KM: Thank you for having agreed to this interview.
KB: And thank you for having given me this opportunity to speak. It isn't often that I get to speak in this sort of environment - one-on-one, without the terrible theater, all the camera-clicks and cheering and jeering and so on, of rallies or press conferences.
KM: Yes. As you probably know - and I'd like to apologize in advance for it- I'm a very direct person, and so I'd like to get right into it. How did you get into politics?
KB: I actually got interested in it a lot earlier than is often said about me. I grew up in the German Territories, under that theocracy, and so everyone, I think, assumes that I was tabula rasa, a baby, at the time of the war and the invasion, and only really gained consciousness, political consciousness, after that. But that isn't true at all - I'm not even sure why so many people think it is.
My mother had me secretly enrolled in a girls's school - illegal - run by the Communists, when I was very young - 4, I think. I have to be clear, they provided a very good education, entirely non-ideological; I wasn't coerced or brainwashed into anything. But at a certain age - I was 15 or 16, something like that - I realized what their party was doing for me, and that they were doing it against the Arian regime and the state that tolerated, at times actively supported, it.
So from then to a bit after the surrender to Reitzmag, I was a devoted Communist. I don't regret it. They gave me so much - I felt obligated to give back, to them and to the future generations, as a matter of moral duty, and would be ashamed, would still be living with that shame, had I done nothing and gone on passively.
I was very active with them. I was a part of their youth wing, I eventually got some local leadership position; when I got older, I helped run their school while taking courses at this underground university, and then after that did trade union work at a textile workshop. In the year leading up to the occupation I was actually doing partisan work. And then came -
KM: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm curious - how did you go from that, from being a Communist for what, 15, 16 years -
KB: 16, I think.
KM: Yes, from being a Communist for that long, from being so devoted to that cause that you were a partisan on its behalf, to becoming a National Republican - from ardent leftist to ardent rightist?
KB: There are two things I want to say, but let me begin with the reasons for my switch between parties.
The Communists, at the time of the collapse of the Federation, were very supportive of, and certainly very heavy participants in, the people's and women's committee movements. They were very much in line with the theory the party had developed in regards to social development and revolution in our country, they had a great deal of popular support, they were carrying out many progressive reforms - economic redistribution, women's liberation, prosecution of "patrons" - they were very much a dream come true.
Very quickly, they gained a huge deal of influence over the committees. They were very much the leaders and coordinators of the movement; the ball was in their court.
And so when Kerel announced elections for the 5th of May, we expected them to call for non-participation. There had been some collaboration before that, and we, the party cadres, accepted that as necessary against the more pressing threat of the occupation forces and their nebulous plans for the country, but we still saw the Kerel government as being a continuation of the old regime, and their elections as being an attempt to re-establish it in a more acceptable form, and believed that those above agreed. But leadership went along, completely, with it and called for the unity of the people's committees and the national government - for the redirection of all this extraordinary energy among the people into the defense of what we saw as reaction.
It was then that I made my break. I saw the decision as an immense betrayal, as it has, with all the disaster and tragedy we have seen over the past few years, turned out to have been; I simply could not carry on.
The National Republicans I joined not much later. Here is where I must come to the second thing I wanted to say.
The National Republicans, with the exception of the Linek period - and even that we can debate, because many of Linek's proposals were made with very progressive intentions - had hitherto been seen as a left-wing force in Istkalenic politics. And during the occupation, when Lawrence Ketist was at the helm of the party, I think they were, very decisively, still left-wing. They wanted radical economic reform - the complete liquidation of the "patrons," the end of the state occupational unions and workers' societies that had at that point become organizations whose sole purpose was to keep new workers out and allow their members to cheat their clients - and were quite strongly against the full restoration of the Censorate and the Courts of Examination.
For me, then, it was not a decision to go from left to right; it was a simply a choice between two left-wing forces. Even now, I still do not see myself as a rightist - I, as my party now does, still support the same reforms, the same policies, on exactly the same lines, as I did then.
KM: Hmm. Do you think people - the media, academicians - are wrong to label the National Republicans right-wing?
KB: Not necessarily. If they had done so in 2021 - yes, absolutely, they would have been well beyond wrong. But things have changed, drastically, since then. The left has implemented the vast majority of its original proposals, and has moved on to others - subsidy and pension reform are two fairly major ones, and another is, of course, the debate on business incorporation - so the parts of it that refused to similarly move on have become the right.
It's also true that there are elements in the National Republicans that would have been right-wing even then. Kaisa Malk and Grete Reiner presented far more reactionary positions, on both political and moral issues, than even the old social democrats held - the two did it under pressure, of course, but the existence of that pressure quite obviously points to very right-wing currents within our party. And that's not to mention Makketis and Eliise, who, in the short time they have been outside of the party, have begun collaboration with every single banned far-right formation there exists in our country.
KM: As an aside, didn't you support those last two?
KB: Yes. It was a mistake. I was dissatisfied with Malk and Reiner's approach to leadership; I wanted change. Evidently what change might have been wrought from what might have been accomplished would have been in the worst possible direction. But I didn't know that at the time. I was blind, and to be honest a little willingly as well.
KM: Moving on, you've effectively become one of the party's leaders, alongside Riina Kruus, and it's fait accompli that you'll formally ascend to the co-leadership as soon as the party holds an extraordinary congress - what do you intend to do with your power?
KB: I want to return to basics. That's what I, with Riina and Lawrence [Ketist], did when we were charged with running the campaign in the recent associational elections, and it's what, I think, led us to perform so strongly. So - return to the issues that used to define us: further reductions in licensing and the barriers to work, further work against corruption, clientelism, and patronism, and further strengthening of our central state. And return to the old ideological framework in order to bring these all together into a coherent whole - the republican and decidedly anti-fascist corporatism that was for so long our standard.
KM: Corporatism hasn't been republican or anti-fascist for quite some time, if ever, in fact, here or abroad; very much the opposite on every count. Why this term?
KB: I don't see any reason not to call it what it is. It's the proper term; many others, liberals, agrarians, even a few socialists, have used it - why should we be forced to surrender it to reactionaries?
KM: It makes you seem reactionary, don't you think?
KB: No.
KM: Recently, the Prime Minister proclaimed her support for it, and the whole public seemed to think she was very reactionary for having done so.
KB: There's a difference between saying that you support a corporatism that is republican and anti-fascist and saying that you love a foreign right-wing dictator, one who was incompetent, unpopular, and the parent of several fascists to boot. I was personally very taken aback by what she said, to be clear.
KM: But you, too, though you haven't praised foreign dictators, have called for dictatorship. Yesterday, you called for the abolition of the parliament and its replacement with a "more authoritative and harmonious system." That, combined with your corporatism, seems to mark you as reactionary.
KB: I didn't call for the abolition of the parliament; I called for the abolition of parliamentarianism. I don't think it is good for any country to be ruled by a small group of out-of-touch politicians who bicker among themselves constantly; I would like a system that incorporates more democracy, with more room for initiatives and referenda, while also encouraging more unity in government, with a permanent, assured grand coalition that prevents excessive instability and ensures both consensus and sane policymaking.
KM: Moving on, the National Republicans made a number of unexpected alliances with the Farmer-Greens for association control; most media believed that they would unite with the liberal Radicals, who seem closer to them ideologically, but they seem, instead, to have universally preferred you. Why do you think this was?
KB: It was odd, I think, that anyone thought they would ally with the Radicals in the first place. The Farmer-Greens do not support that type of "liberalism;" they are not for respecting so-called subsidiarity which outsources governance to various corrupt, rent-seeking groupings. Their politics are simply a less pragmatic, more rurally focused version of ours. They are, in essence, to us as the Agrarian Union is to the Communists; for them not to ally with us would be as likely as the Agrarian Union deciding, suddenly, to ally with the Union Party, an impossibility.
People see, I think, that they have a more decentralized base, that they are more libertarian on social and cultural issues, and conclude that the Farmer-Greens must simply be a rural version of the Radicals. But look at the actual proposals and there is a world of difference; almost no similarities in ideology at all, in fact.
KM: Quite inversely, the National Republicans were rather cold to the Statebuilders in the few associations where a coalition might have been possible, in spite of the general perception being that the two are virtually identical - why, again, do you think this was?
KB: Grudges. The Statebuilding Party has effectively become Yasemin Demirkol's latest attempt to fuse the traditional National Republican ideology with wonkery. She has been at it for years, first with Progress, then with Union/Progress, and now with this, and, to be entirely honest, many in our party are upset with it. It seems to them - and even to me - that it's some odd tantrum on her behalf that she has thrown for two years now because she is still upset that leadership overruled her, when she was still a member, in deciding to move towards populism. It's just irritating, I think, to many.
KM: But your party nominated her - with her full consent - as an "independent guest" to occupy the position of Minister of Public Distribution, as you did for all of the other Statebuilding leaders - Uklertal, Sepp, Ilves, Laakonen...
KB: They're all very effective ministers who align with us ideologically; we want them in our fold.
KM: Do you think a full merger is likely?
KB: Fait accompli.
KM: Well, that's all the time we have, unfortunately. Thanks for having spoken with us, and all the best of luck in your future endeavors.
KB: You too. Thanks, again, and farewell.
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Nation
Polling 5/4-6/4
Party Preference (+/- 5/3-6/3)
Union Party (right-wing to far-right, in opposition): 40,3% (+35,2)
Social Democratic Party (left-wing, in opposition): 20,3% (+8,9)
Communist Party (left-wing, in gov't): 10,6% (-9,5)
National Republican Party (right-wing, in gov't): 7,5% (-5,1)
Agrarian Union (left-wing, in gov't): 6,5% (-5,6)
Republican Syndicalist Party (syncretic, in gov't): 5,2% (-10,0)
Statebuilding Party (center to center-left, in gov't): 3,8% (-4,3)
Radical Democratic Party (center, in gov't): 3,5% (-6,0)
Farmer-Green Alliance (center-right to right-wing, in gov't): 2,1% (-4,8)
other: 1,0% (-)Government Approval
approve: 5,1%
disapprove: 94,0%
no opinion: 0,9% -
Republic
Kalessed refuses the removal of Íkrat: "I am the guarantor of the republic"
Head of State Ilmaras Kalessed has announced that she will not comply with the Censorate's decision to remove Elizabeth Íkrat as Prime Minister, and will take "all necessary action" to ensure that the current coalition government maintains in office.
"This government," she said at a press conference held earlier today, "is the highest expression of the will of the Istkalenic people. It derives its legitimacy from the parliament they elected; it is formed out of the parties they freely placed their confidence in; it is carrying out the agenda they chose at the last election. I am the guarantor of the Republic: our constitution gives me full power and responsibility to keep Istkalenic government a public matter, a democratic matter. And as guarantor, as Head of State, I will not let - I am bound not to let - a small and anti-democratic clique run amok over the affairs which rightfully are the people's. Ms. Íkrat's government will remain until parliament - until the representatives of the people - withdraw their confidence in it. This is absolute and final - and I will take all necessary action to ensure that it remains such."
Kalessed's announcement is a radical break with thousands of years of Istkalenic political tradition, which has traditionally ascribed to the courts and the Censorate absolute power over government affairs. While her action is theoretically legal - the Head of State is indeed given broad and absolute power to determine the exact form of the Istkalenic government and ensure its "republican nature" - it is nevertheless so contrary to the principles that have historically guided the country that it may very well be an act of treason.
The Censorate itself has not yet responded, but is expected to do so later today. Most experts predict that it will move to remove Kalessed from office.
Íkrat claims existence of "reactionary-technocratic" coalition conspiring against her
Elizabeth Íkrat, Prime Minister, has claimed that a "reactionary-technocratic" coalition has been conspiring against her government to put to an end her corporatist program for Istkalen, blaming it for recent poor polling number as well as for the Censorate's recent attempt to remove her from office.
"Istkalen," she said at a Communist Party rally held yesterday, "is beseiged by reaction. The Reitzmics and Vards outside conspire to reduce us to colony; the compradors, the capitalist roaders, and the religious reactionaries within have joined together to bring to an end popular government. Even now they sit in their offices, their mansions, their palaces, here and abroad, planning my downfall - the end of our movement for reform, justice, democracy. Let us stand against this cabal! Let us smash this coalition of reactionaries and technocrats and bring to full flower in our Istkalen a people's regime!"
In the few days she has been Prime Minister, Íkrat has been faced with massive and uniform public opposition to her agenda, a politically bizarre syncresis of the corporatism of the Istkalenic right and the welfare-levelling of the Istkalenic left that finds itself entirely incompatible with either. She has found herself with almost no allies in civil society; her statement is likely an attempt to regain their confidence by appealing to their general opposition to the dominance of the Istkalenic judiciary over the state.
However, while her legal removal at the hands of the Censorate has proven similarly unpopular, it has not in any way aided her popularity or legitimacy; her allegations are therefore unlikely to gain her any additional sympathy.
With popularity in free-fall, the Ecologists, New Agrarians, Farmer-Greens, Radical Democrats, and Statebuilders come to an agreement to create a new Agrarian Union
The Agrarian Union has - yet again - been refounded, now as a coalition between the Ecologists and New Agrarians - the members of the old Agrarian Union - the Statebuilders, the Radical Democrats, and the Farmer-Greens. In its new incarnation, it will be led by Esketal Indretek, and be an "agrarian and solidarist movement" which will work primarily for "social justice," "regional levelling," and "auto-development."
Its program is modelled on that of the 1970s and 80s Agrarian Union, focusing on a transformation of economy, society, and polity on corporatist lines coupled with a full, if gradual, return to traditional methods and organizations of industry, abandoning even those few Western innovations that have found their way into the country since the beginning of the occupation in order to pursue a "full independence" on the economic front. However, the new Union will also maintain a firmly socially progressive line, as well as a more intense commitment to environmentalism and opposition to nuclear power.
Formed as its constituents decline sharply in polling as a result of their participation in government, the Agrarian Union seeks to bolster moderation and stability in the country by consolidating pro-government and reformist forces under a single, ideologically coherent umbrella. As the center flees, however, to more radical opposition parties, like the Union Party and Social Democrats, in its strong opposition to the radical incoherence of the Ikrat government, whether this strategy will be successful is unclear.
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Republic
Polling 10/4 - 17/4
conducted by Kaitmulen, 2.445 respondents
Party Preference
Social Democratic Party (banned)/Bloc of National Reform (refounded SDP) (left-wing to far-left): 36,1%
Union Party (right-wing to far-right): 34,5%
National Republican Party (right-wing): 12,1%
Republican Syndicalist Party (right-wing): 9,8%
Communist Party (left-wing): 4,5%
Agrarian Union (left-wing): 1,2%
other: 1,8%Government Approval
approve: 4,1%
disapprove: 91,9%
no opinion: 4,0% -
Republic
Internal debates over the future of the Communists
The Communists of Istkalen are at a loss. The 18th of April robbed them of ideology, the occupation of opportunity, and now their own government of any and all legitimacy. Currently polling under the threshold, and likely to fall even further as even those who were once their most stalwart partisans flee them for Inge Meier's Bloc of National Reform or Katharina Beck's National Republican Party, they stare oblivion in the face.
With so existential a threat so near, they have retreated from the wild experiments in organization and ideology they have been conducting since the capitulation to Reitzmag and returned to the solid, time-tested tradition that unites all Communists: infighting. Though they currently have only 12 deputies in parliament, the support of but a few mutualities, and effectively no activist base, they have found themselves divided into four factions, none of which can find common ground with the others and all of which claim that it is them and only them who have the ability to guide the party back towards its former popularity and dominance.
The largest is led by Antras Arkalis, former Minister of Finance and current Minister of Energy, who calls for the party to become a defender of Western-style capitalism. Claiming that the country continues to suffer under "feudalism," he demands a break with the old doctrine of "socialism with Istkalenic characteristics," which suggests that "the concentration of existing industry" under the auspices of the workers' associations is the surest and most possible path towards socialism. It is, he insists, a reactionary position, one out of accord with communist principles - for him, it preserves too much, when the aim of the communist and workers' movements ought to be to destroy so as to level.
To take its place he would like most his own "market socialism," involving a legalization of incorporation, the creation of a legal framework for joint-stock companies and a stock market, subsidies for voluntary collectivization in the agricultural and crafts sectors, and privatization of most "non-social" assets, particularly factories, currently owned either by the state or by associations - the establishment on firm ground, in essence, of a fully Western economy in Istkalen. This, he insists, is the only way to sweep away the patrons, the courts, and all their companions, and to develop the country, both socially and economically, to a point where it can be ready for a "realer socialism on the Czech or Nicoleizian style," in his own words.
The second largest is that of Iras Tilkanas, Istkalen's sitting European Councillor, the only Communist figure with net-positive approval ratingsand the last of the public figures of its once-dominant right-wing. Her call is for a fuller embrace of "socialism with Istkalenic characteristics:" she insists that the party, to remain relevant, must "moderate and become a party of the broad left," in essence move closer to the more popular "economic federalism" and "corporate statism" of parties like the National Republicans and Republican Syndicalists.
She wants the party to embrace the politically authoritarian designs of the Istkalenic right, from their support for ultra-presidentialism to their schemes to abolish the legislature, as well as their approach, founded on layered duties, the worker to the association and the association to the state, to the economy; she would like conservatism on all things except for environmental, cultural, labor, and subsidy-related issues.
The third is of Indras Irakemar, the sitting Minister of Finance. Her insistence is that the party must adopt planning as the solution to all problems. It is planning, she says, will drive forth economic development, planning that will prevent overconsumption, planning that will cure Istkalenic of all its ills - planning, planning, planning. She envisions a great planning board dictating and the associations mobilizing in service; this is her socialism, her democratic economy, the future ideal she believes the Communists must promote above all.
And the fourth, the smallest, is that of the floundering Ms. Ikrat herself. It has but one belief - that the Communists must remain in power for as long as possible.
With no party congress in sight, and with Ikrat and her colleagues dominant over the central committee, the struggle between these four will not be fought in any formal environment. There will be no ousters of committeemen and commiteewoman, no sudden purges of liaisons with mutualities; none of that. But it will, nevertheless, be an obvious struggle.
Those involved are among the most powerful men and women in Istkalen. Though they may not be able to change the party through formal mechanisms, they nevertheless will have a broad array of tools available to them to intimidate and therefore, perhaps, to force change. There will be rallies, there will be great speeches, there will be public, emotional ultimatums with threats of splits and betrayals - these, the methods of mass manipulation and mobilization, will be, in the place of backroom arguments and long ballotings, the mechanisms of this intraparty struggle.
It is a form of politics entirely new to these politicians, and certainly to the country; how successful it will be, especially in the face of such intense public opposition to the Communist Party, remains to be seen. The opportunity for revival and change, not merely of and to the Communist Party but to the greater Republic, is, nevertheless, clear and present.
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Review of the Two Worlds
The failure of elite politics
The Statebuilding Party is dead. Almost all of its leaders have been discredited completely in Istkalenic politics; the organization itself has been absorbed by the already moribund Agrarian Union. The "moderate social democracy" it claimed to represent has been left without support popular or institutional; in every way, the project it spearheaded has failed. And the few of its most prominent figures who remain influential and popular - Yasemin Demirkol, Lauri Laakonen, Eliise Sepp - have spurned it completely.
Political commentators say, now, that this extraordinary collapse was entirely predictable - that it was easy to see that the Statebuilders were doomed from the very beginning. But this was not the tune they were singing but two months ago. Their insistence, which they claim now only the foolish could have believed, was that the Statebuilders were not on the path to implosion but instead ascendant - that their politics, a synthesis of the reformist and moderate left with the technocratic, law-and-order right, were the future of an Istkalen disillusioned, through the misrule of Vistek Rikkalek and the NSC, with populism and extremism. Only with the failure of the 4 March elections, in which the Statebuilders, defying polling that had pointed to them being the country's second most popular party, failed to make any significant showing outside of the associations of the elite - of the civil service, the security service, and the financiers, merchants, and economic planners of the Commerce Association - did they even begin to change their minds.
The mirage of Statebuilder-success, in essence, was one that was, at the time, very convincing to all - and not without reason. The popularity of the technocratic government of Ursula Orlich, the rapid decline of the far-right, and, above all, the rapid growth of the Statebuilders themselves in polling at the time painted a clear picture of a new Istkalen, an Istkalen that had grown to hate the old parties and politicians, an Istkalen entirely eager to embrace order and firm authority.
Why then, a mirage and not reality? With everything pointing so clearly to the inevitability of change, why did change ultimately not happen?
As the political commentators now quite correctly insist, the answer is simple.
The Republic of Istkalen is an oligarchy. It is a state in which politics is conducted by unaccountable elites, in smoky backrooms, for their own benefit; a state whose republicanism is nothing more than a paper-thin facade meant to obscure a reality of corruption and authoritarianism.
It is because of this that populism-as-strategy has been so enduring; there being no real democracy in Istkalen, its politicians, fearing retribution, must create with their words a facsimile of it, radical enough in its appearance to distract from its obvious falseness.
Everyone with real power pretends to be a populist; no one who shies away from this mask has any hope of remaining in office. Even women like Ursula Orlich, the President of the Censorate and an example par excellence of the closed and elitist nature of governance in Istkalen, center in their words a people fighting against an elite of patrons and compradors and now, in the aftermath of the occupation, Reitzmic and Vardic spies, a brave people who must be defended, who must be represented, who must be helped and strengthened so that they may win their struggle and thereafter establish a state of their own over and against their erstwhile oppressors.
The Statebuilders saw simply that those who had held power before and through the NSC period, who had been left without support, had attempted to portray themselves, as all Istkalenic politicians had been wont to do, as populists, and so tried to reject that same populism to avoid the same fate.
And without a populist approach, they could come across as being nothing more than, like the Union Party, active and open supporters of corruption, authoritarianism, and reaction in Istkalen. In a period still characterized by widespread fear of punishment for dissent, this is enough to create the appearance of widespread public support - but not enough to produce the same in a secret ballotage held among and for a population wanting, however secretly, nothing more than reform, opening, and democracy.
Now, as this same elitism, in the face of the deep unpopularity of Elizabeth Ikrat and her government, seems to make a resurgence, it is important to keep this experience in mind. The most aristocratic and authoritarian aspects of state remain, as they were just a few months ago, deeply unpopular; though the idea of order may now be in demand, Istkaleners do not cry out for a dictatorship of the courts. An embrace of elitist rhetoric and appearance continues to be politically suicidal; politicians, especially those in the opposition, internal or external, would do well to remember this in order to avoid being consigned to the same fate as the Statebuilders.
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Nation
Mea Culpa
Irenet Isteresskemar
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
This is what and all I must say to those who have stood with me through the past few years. It is - yes - my fault, and my fault alone, my fault in the highest, that your long work has been for naught, that your hopes have suddenly been crushed, that our efforts to bring the voice of the countryside to Kirelesile have ended in failure.
I gave you, unnecessarily, to extremism. I pushed your cause to the fringe. And I staked out a position that could never find itself with real power and influence.
With these mistakes, I betrayed you, and I am now, in the aftermath, bound to make right what I have done wrong.
I am therefore retiring from electoral politics. I will not take part in the refoundation of the Agrarian Union, and will resign from all positions I hold in the apparatus thereof.
I will continue to hope for your victory, so that your work is protected against the advance of foreign industry, so that our independence is safeguarded, so that our democracy is maintained and strengthened. But I will limit myself to this and nothing else.
I will retain only my position as Minister of Foreign Affairs, as a nonpartisan. Only here, I feel, have I been able to do any productive work, and only here would my loss be more of a burden to the country and the movement than my continued presence. I will therefore remain to continue to chart a non-aligned, internationalist, and resolutely national course for our Istkalen in the world.
To the people of Istkalen, its real heroes, to whom I owe my life, to whom I address all my possible apologies and respect, then.
Irenet Isteresskemar. -
Nation
Polling 7/5 - 8/5
conducted by Isdenek, 931 respondents
Party Preference (+/- 5/4 - 6/4 poll)
Bloc of National Reform (left-wing, under Censorate investigation for "anti-republicanism," in opposition): 32,9% (+12,6)
National Republican Party (right-wing, in gov't): 24,1% (+16,6)
Agrarian Union (left-wing): 12,2% (+5,7)
Communist Party (left-wing, in gov't): 11,0% (+0,4)
Republican Syndicalist Party (right-wing, in opposition) 9,8% (+4,6)
People's Party (right-wing, pro-government split from Republican Syndicalists, in gov't): 6,5%
Union Party (right-wing, under gov't investigation for "collaboration with occupiers," in opposition): 3,2 (-37,1)
other: 1,8%Government Approval
approve: 55,8% (+50,7)
disapprove: 30,2% (-63,8)
no opinion: 14,0% (+13,1) -
Republic
Polling 10/5 - 17/5
conducted by Kaitmulen, 2.501 respondents
Party Preference
Antifascists (formerly Bloc of National Reform, formerly Social Democratic Party) (far-left): 25,8% (-10,3)
National Republican Party (center-right, in gov't): 24,3% (+12,2)
People's Party (new, split from RSP, center-right, in gov't): 17,6%
Agrarian Union (center, in gov't): 10,1% (+8,9)
Republican Syndicalist Party (right-wing): 9,8% (-)
Communist Party (left-wing, in gov't): 9,5% (+5,0)
Union Party (far-right): 4,1% (-30,4)Government Approval
approve: 57,8 (+53,7)
disapprove: 30,2 (-61,7)
no opinion: 12,0% (+8,0)Analysis
A note, firstly, on our updating of party political positions. As Istkalen exits the transitional instability of the post-occupation period, the center in its politics has moved sharply to the right. Socialization in particularly is not as well supported as it was under the J-TAI or under the rule of Vistek Rikkalek; firm economic nationalism, with the requisite opposition to firms and "Western industry," has returned in full force as the most popular socioeconomic system in the country. Parties that were previously labeled as right-wing or center-right for their support for this system - the National Republican Party, and, to a lesser extent, the People's Party - have therefore been relabeled to reflect their positions relative to the new consensus.
The Agrarian Union and Republican Syndicalist Parties have also been relabeled to reflect genuine changes of position resulting from recent leadership elections and/or mergers; the former has been tentatively moved to the political center as a result of its recent absorption of the right-wing Farmer-Green Alliance and Radical Democratic Party, while the latter has been relabeled as firmly right-wing, instead of syncretic, as a result of the hijacking of its leadership by the radical right and the subsequent departure of its founders, alongside many of its more moderate figures, for the new People's Party.
Changes in label notwithstanding, the past month has seen significant changes in political preference among the Istkalenic people. The Agrarian Union and Communist Party have both partially recovered from the collapses in support they saw with the inauguration of the Íkrat government, likely the result of both Íkrat's increasing popularity and the recent confirmation of their respective leaderships and ideological commitments. However, while the Agrarians are likely to see a full recovery to pre-government support levels - most old regional affiliates have returned to their fold, while their polling here is already very close to what it was prior to the implosion - the Communists are not. The "return to normalcy" has effectively doomed them; with their signature policies, socialization and planning, having fallen significantly in popularity, the vast majority of Istkaleners are now far more wary of them, unwilling to support a political force they see as being opposed to the essence of their way of life.
The National Republican Party appears, meanwhile, to be cementing its dominance. With new popular leadership, in addition to an updated, reformist platform, they have managed to gain the support of many ex-communists and become, by far, the most popular of the "establishment" parties. The nascent People's Party, too, with similarly refreshed leadership under Makketis Íkalsser and Eliise Raadik, is fast becoming the country's second "traditional" force, having managed to consolidate much of the country's moderate right under a platform of reform and auto-development coupled with rhetoric emphasizing a return to the economic and social policies of the prewar social democratic regime.
Both hard right and hard left, however, are seeing what influence they had drain away. Repeated bans - the party is now in its third iteration - as well as increased support for economic and cultural nationalism have resulted in a sharp decline in support for the ultraliberal, anti-establishment Antifascists (formerly the Bloc of National Reform, itself formerly the Social Democratic Paryt) of Inge Meier; while the party maintains, on a base of intense youth dissatisfaction, its lead over the parties of the establishment, it is nevertheless in freefall, and is likely to return to its former status as a secondary force. The Union, meanwhile, with many of its leaders faced with accusations of collaboration with the J-TAI, some now even standing trial before the recently created Extraordinary Court for the Prosecution of the Criminals of the Occupation (ECPCO), has imploded completely. Only the Republican Syndicalist Party, having established a niche as a party for ultranationalist pensioners, has managed to maintain its previous levels of support - and this only by sacrificing, effectively permanently, its influence with its exit from government and fullthroated embrace of war denialism, irredentism, and illegal extremism.
The government, for its part, has overcome the intense opposition that it faced at the beginning of its term. Its exploitation of anti-Reitzmic and anti-Vardic sentiment, in addition to its popular clampdown on the power of the judiciary, has allowed it to regain the trust and support of most Istkaleners; while its foundations remain shaky, it is well on its way, surprisingly, to stability.
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Republic
Íkrat announces creation of "Alliance for Peace" at opening of new reactor
At the long-awaited opening of the Kérévan Nuclear Power Plant's third reactor,, Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat announced her government's intention to create an organization, the "Alliance for Peace," to coordinate efforts to further develop civilian uses of nuclear energy and oppose the further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
"We have turned," she said, "the methods of war into those of peace and prosperity. With the advances in science that elsewhere, at other times, were and still might be applied to projects of death and destruction, we have managed to dispel the darkness: the opening of Reactor No. 3 will bring life and light alike to millions more. For us, human life, human dignity, are of the highest priority; nothing comes before them."
"Now," she continued, "as the elites to our south and north feed their brutalized working classes to the monster of war, we stand as one of the last bulwarks of peace and civilization in Europe, a beacon and a model for those who continue to stand against the death-fetishism that consumes our Union. This reactor is therefore not merely an opening, but also a symbol, for us and for many millions more across the continents - that the cause of peace endures, that it will continue to endure, that no threats or bombs of Simon Bridges or Kristian Nylund will ever exterminate it completely. And so, in honor of peace, in honor of all those who defend it, we are proud not merely to announce the inauguration of this now-completed project, but also of another: we are creating an Alliance for Peace, to defend the people against the siren-song of war, to consolidate the movement for universal human dignity around a single, strong pole, to preserve and further perpetuate the progress of humanity."
Every Istkalener is automatically a member of the Alliance; local people's committees have been directed to organize local chapters, which are to report to a central council, already appointed by the Ministry of the Interior.
Grete Reiner, former co-chair of the National Republican Party, is the head of the new organization; she has announced her intention to give it an "international presence," creating a tentative framework for the registration of foreign chapters and asking European leaders to "commit themselves to the cause of peace" and support the creation of a strong, international "arrangement for defense," alongside a moratorium on the granting of licenses for nuclear arms production.
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Republic
Íkrat unveils program for "revolutionary consolidation"
Elizabeth Íkrat, at the Alliance for Peace rally in Kirelesile where she revealed the new gov't program
Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat has announced that her government will be breaking with its original program, much criticized for its ideological incoherence, to pursue a new course of "revolutionary consolidation."
"The experience of the past month," she said at the Alliance for Peace rally where she made the decision public, "has proven to us the necessity of a radical break. The Republic is not yet on firm ground; it faces, still, enemies internal and external, powerful enemies, which seek its death. Collaboration and comprador-ism, corruption and criminality - all stand united, in concert with the continued plots of the Nyetthem-Hampton City axis against our sacred independence, against our country, the fifth column of a secret war. But no more."
"The government," she continued, "independently of the parties, has therefore committed itself to a new platform of revolutionary consolidation. Old complacency must and will be rejected in the face of the existential threat our Istkalen faces; we will turn the whole country on its head to crush the traitors and make way for the true republic."
Íkrat went on to draw a broad outline of her program, calling for the establishment of so-called "people's courts" in every municipality to try both "patrons" and suspected "fifth-columnists," the placement of local police forces under a centralized national command, and the creation of a "National Association for the Defense of the Republic" to unify the workers', cultural, and minority associations under the banner of her revolutionary consolidation. She nevertheless remained coy about its exact content, insisting that it would only be "revealed at the proper time."
Her announcement has thrown the National Assembly into disarray. With the exception of the Antifascists, formerly t theSocial Democrats, who have pledged themselves to a line of "constructive opposition," supporting measures they see as being conducive to political and economic liberalization in Istkalen while opposing those they believe will further perpetuate what they term "neo-feudalism," the parties have effectively fallen apart, with support and opposition to the program almost random. Some of the furthest right deputies of the Union, for example, now praise a government they once violently opposed as progressive Agrarians, once perhaps Íkrat's most fervent supporters, call for her overthrow. The disorder and division is such that it is unclear whether or not Íkrat's government will even be able to survive the next week, let alone pass its proposals.
Nevertheless, in spite of its divisiveness among parliamentary deputies, Íkrat's decision is expected to only help improve the popularity of a government that remains, months after its inauguration, on shaky ground. Though Istkaleners have tired of political instability and vacillation, they are equally, if not more, exhausted with the corruption, crime, and perceived "fifth-columnism" that has plagued the country since the end of the occupation; any concrete effort to oppose any of these is enough to win their lasting support.
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Republic
Collapse of the Agrarian Union
The Agrarian Union is, for what is now the third time since the beginning of the occupation, dead. In response to the joint decision of the alliance's leader, Esketal Indretek, and central committee to enter the opposition and adopt a new, right-wing manifesto, the Statebuilding Party, Radical Democratic Party, and Farmer-Green Alliance, three of its four constituent parties, have announced that they will be permanently withdrawing from the coalition in order to continue their support for and presence in Elizabeth Íkrat's government, effectively ending the existence of this particular incarnation of the organization.
"We cannot," read a joint statement, addressed to Indretek, authored by all of the three parties' leaders, "support a project of reaction and austerity. We made alliance to and only to unify our efforts for a democratic and social republic in our country; your impositions, having made alliance an enemy of democracy and the social state, therefore compel us to withdraw. We will continue to defend the consolidation of the revolution of the 18th of April - against the Agrarians, if necessary."
The mass exit is, in many ways, merely a confirmation of the chaos which has beset the Agrarian Union in the aftermath of the government's decision to adopt a program of "revolutionary consolidation," formalizing the already-existing, if new, divisions in voting behavior within the parliamentary group. Most saw such a split, in any case, as largely inevitable, given the heterogenous ideologies of the parties that formed the alliance.
The newly independent parties, for the time being, will remain separate, having already moved to form parliamentary groups of their own; none, however, have yet ruled out the future creation of a new union between themselves.
Íkrat will hold referendum on continued existence of Censorate
As a part of her project of "revolutionary consolidation," Elizabeth Íkrat has announced that her government will be organizing a binding referendum on the continued existence of the Censorate, a system of quasi-religious courts which Istkalenic tradition has historically given the right to freely remove government officials and ban political organizations to.
"In a republic," said Íkrat at the rally of the newly founded National Association for the Defense of the Republic where she made the decision public, "it is the people, and the people alone, who rule. Sovereignty is theirs, not that of the heavens, not that of those who claim to be their representatives on Earth, but theirs and theirs alone. That so much power continues to rest in the hands of religious authorities in our country is therefore unacceptable, an undemocratic barbarism that must be eliminated in its totality for our national revolution to finally triumph."
"It is thus our aim," she continued, "to abolish the Censorate and all its ilk, these unaccountable, unelected cliques whose sole claim to legitimacy is the nonexistent mandate they claim to have received from the divine, so that the Istkalenic people may at last have full authority over their lives. We intend to hold a binding referendum on the existence of the Censorate on the 13th of August to let the nation put a final end to the era of autocracy and usher in a new and just democracy."
The proposed vote must first be approved either by the National Assembly or by Head of State Ilmaras Kalessed to go forwards. While it is possible that the Constitutional Court, historically aligned with the Censorate, will strike it down, either before or after approval, it is considered unlikely, given both the restrictions the current state of defense has imposed on the courts in general and the "preventative detention" of many of the justices' family members.
No polling has yet been conducted on the question; Republic has commissoned Kaltmulen for an issue poll including it, to be released in late July.
Social Democratic Party relegalized
The Istkalenic Censorate has reversed, under significant pressure from Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat and Head of State Ilmaras Kalessed, its decision of the 12th of April to dissolve the Social Democratic Party and suspend the national cabinet.
"We are bound," wrote Censorate president Ursula Orlich in a statement meant to explain the move, "to defend the Republic - not the heavens, not the dictates of Liris, not virtue, but the Republic, the continued rule of the people. We therefore are rescinding our order to appoint me as Prime Minister of Istkalen, suspend the cabinet of Elizabeth Íkrat, and dissolve the Social Democratic Party."
Neither Orlich nor any other member of the Censorate have provided any further reasoning as to their decision.
Both government and opposition have, notwithstanding, met the reversal with praise; the Prime Minister has released an official statement congratulating "the most reactionary institution in Istkalen" for having "contributed, for perhaps the first time in the hundreds of years it has existed, to the national welfare," while almost all parties, with the sole exception of the Republican Syndicalists, who believe the Social Democrats to be a psychological operation of the Kingdom of Reitzmag meant to undermine the integrity of the Istkalenic state, have hailed it as a rare example of moderation and balance in a country increasingly buffeted by the extremes.
Inge Meier, leader of the Social Democrats, however, has reacted only to say, in her exact words, "it is what it is."
"Everything will continue as it has," she said when asked to elaborate; she refused to explain further. Other members of her party have been just as uncommunicative, if not more.
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Republic
Íkrat reshuffles her cabinet
Pictured: Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat at an interview for Republic held earlier this year
Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat, in an effort to recoup recent losses in public approval, stabilize her government in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Agrarian Union, and further reorient her administration around her new program of "revolutionary consolidation," has reshuffled her cabinet, increasing the influence of the right-nationalist National Republican Party and the left-nationalist Statebuilding Party to the particular detriment of the agrarian Farmer-Green Alliance and People's Party
The decision, ostensibly taken to "improve the efficiency of government" and "balance the cabinet," has been interpreted by many as an attempt by Íkrat to resurrect the broader Communist coalition of the occupation period, a large tent united , as her government now seeks to be, by a general commitment to nationalism, redistribution, and democracy: the famous "people's rule, people's welfare, and people's self-determination" put forwards as the guiding principles of the Republic by its founder, Makketis Melitek, over 75 years ago. Nevertheless, with the continued elevation of major figures who served in the cabinet that served immediately preceding the war, like Milrakas Ikoszer, Valeras Ekteran, and Intaras Lastek, as well as Rikkalekists like Líreskal Iskentek and Kuldar Loime, it may also be a more general attempt to appeal to a mythic past, incarnate in Vistek Rikkalek, in old Social Democracy, many Istkaleners now look back to in a time widely perceived to be one of decline.
Reactions to the reshuffle have been mixed.
Lawrence Ketist, temporary co-leader of the National Republican Party serving in Katharina Beck's place during her vacation, praised it as "necessary" and "forwards-looking," hailing the appointment of "patriots like the Col. Loime and my dear friend, Líreskal" as "a great advance for the country, both for its social state and for its ability to assert itself in an increasingly turbulent world."
Gertrude Istikas, leader of the Radical Democratic Party, who maintained her position as Minister of Justice after the reshuffle, was not quite as positive: "It was necessary," she said at a press conference held yesterday, "for the continued good functioning of the government. I am nevertheless concerned about the consequences, both among the public and within the cabinet, the appointment of authoritarians and radicals like the Col. Loime, Mr. Iskentek, and Ms. Lastek may bring."
Kuseli Virejane, interim co-leader of the Farmer-Green Alliance and Minister of Religious Affairs, outright declared her and her party's opposition to the change, insisting that it was "a humiliation our movement had to accept for the greater good" and that "the new cabinet [was] poorly selected, will soon certainly fail, and only received our approval because of our conviction that government would be handed entirely to anti-reformists in the case of a delay on our part."
Inge Meier, leader of the Social Democratic Party, on whose support the now-minority government now relies, has refused to make public her opinion on the issue, but has nevertheless indicated that her party will vote in favor of the new ministers.
Whether the new cabinet will have any effect on Íkrat and her government's popularities remains to be seen; while changes in political direction have helped past heads of governments regain lost legitimacy, Istkaleners have historically ignored changes in ministers.
The vote of confirmation is due to be held tomorrow, and is expected to pass. The composition of the new government is given below.
COMMUNIST MINISTERS
Prime Minister: Elizabeth Íkrat
Minister of Finance: Indras Irakemar
Minister of Health: Erdanas Rikasel
Minister of Education: Iras Litestek
Minister of Energy: Antras Arkalis
Minister of Culture: Aysun Mutlu (replacing Ikelin Kalmet)NATIONAL REPUBLICAN MINISTERS
Minister of Agriculture: Katharina Beck
Minister of Industry: Riina Kruus
Minister of Integration: Lawrence Ketist
Minister of Public Works: Grete Reiner
Minister of Social Affairs: Kaisa MalkSTATEBUILDING MINISTERS
Minister of Public Distribution: Yasemin Demirkol
Minister of the Interior: Kuldar Loime (new)
Minister of State Security: Lauri Laakonen
Minister of Defense: Eliise Sepp
Minister of National Resources: Líreskal Iskentek (new)
Minister of Climate: Kondres Uklertal (note: no longer a member of party - Statebuilders have moved for Kalju Ilves to take his position in proposed cabinet)PEOPLE'S MINISTERS
Minister of Crafts, Trades, and the Professions: Milrakas Ikoszer
Minister of Labor: Eliise Raadik
Minister of Housing: Makketis Íkalsser (formerly Minister of Social Affairs)
Minister of Conservation: Valeras Ekteran (formerly Minister of Housing)
Minister of Equality (new ministry): Intaras Lastek (new)RADICAL DEMOCRATIC MINISTERS
Minister of Justice: Gertrude Istikas
FARMER-GREEN AND AFFILIATED MINISTERS
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Írenet Isteresskemar
Minister of Religious Affairs: Kuseli VirejaneUklertal leaves Statebuilders
pictured: Kondres Uklertal at a press conference held earlier this year
With the political rift between him - socially conservative, strongly environmentalist, and in favor of a form of degrowth - and the rest of his party - socially progressive and increasingly both pro-growth and environment-agnostic - having been growing, Kondres Uklertal, now-former co-leader of the Statebuilding Party, at last, had had enough.
At a rally meant to reintroduce the party to the public in the aftermath of its exit from the Agrarian Union, Uklertal loudly pronounced his opposition to the "libertinianism" espoused by his colleagues, demanding a return to "natural order" and announcing his intention to found a new party:
"For them, everything is permitted. They do not believe in responsibility, in duty, at all. They want everyone to be free to do as they wish! They want society to become a collection of libertines, hedonists, solipsists, every person concerned only with his own pleasure, even if it means the total destruction of everyone around him. I was opposed to this ideology, and I remain opposed to it; my movement has become its progenitor, and so, now, I will do everything in my power to destroy it. I am therefore announcing the foundation of the Istkalenic Union of Greens, a truly social and environmentalist movement that will affirm the need for a responsible and sustainable society, against the decadence of the broad left."
He was removed from the stage shortly thereafter; Lauri Laakonen, Minister of State Security and the party's other leader, hastily replaced him to condemn his "regressive attitudes" and insist that "a truly social state rejects coercion and promotes cohesion" before letting Kuldar Loime, both the former colonel responsible for the mutiny that overthrew the National Salvation Council and replaced it with the current parliamentary regime and a better orator than him, give a longer, evidently impromptu speech, broadly condemning the Istkalenic right while accusing Uklertal of both J-TAI and NSC collaboration.
Uklertal has since released a short, ten-point manifesto, calling for, among other things, the "planning of consumption," "de-Westernization and personalization of industry," "prohibition of anti-social publications and organizations," and "affirmation of corvée." He has gained the support of 2 deputies of the Statebuilding Party and 10 of the Farmer-Greens, who will form a new parliamentary group shortly; it is unlikely, however, that any other legislators at national level will join him.
Support for his party will, in all likelihood, be marginal at best - there is little space on the right for yet another party, there existing already four with broadly similar positions. Its founding, given its basis, nevertheless reflects a growing reaction against the social progressivism and economic openness that have seized hold of Istkalen.
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Republic
Recognition of partnerships to end, civil marriage to enter into force
With her new cabinet having been approved by the National Assembly, the Prime Minister has announced that her government will end state recognition of so-called "labor partnerships," originally introduced by the prewar Social Democratic regime as a part of their greater program of social engineering and transformation, and replace it with a system of civil marriage.
"It is time," she said in a short address made to the public, "to move on from the authoritarian past. My government is fully committed to the opening and modernization of the state - most of all the role it plays in our daily life. We will therefore break with the unfortunate precedent set by past governments, and abandon the experiments in social engineering that have gone on for far too long: the still-lingering Cult of Labor, the system of quasi-confessional marriage, and, above all, the labor partnership. We will propose, to the National Assembly, a bill, long in the works, to do away with the labor partnership and finally create an equitable system of civil marriage, open to all, in this country."
The new framework will be open to all and permit for no-fault divorce. Current benefits meant for labor-partners or those married under the pre-existing confessional system will be diverted to a new, fully-secular system that will help fund parental leave and childcare.
Most expect the proposal to be approved by the National Assembly; while opposition to the full state recognition of marriage is common within some government parties, particularly the Statebuilders and National Republicans, the entirety of the coalition is being whipped to vote in favor, with several particularly hardline deputies having been threatened with expulsion from all committees and even their respective parties if they vote otherwise.
Nevertheless, even government ministers have criticized, if lightly, the proposal.
"If we are to recognize marriage," insisted Minister of State Security Lauri Laakonen, voicing a sentiment in which he was joined by many others, from Minister of Social Affairs Grete Reiner to Minister of Finance Indras Irakemar, "we must ensure that it does not jeopardize the rights of women and children. One of the aims of the 18th of April was to liberate the whole family of labor - to socialize the tasks of education, childcare, and other forms of onerous domestic work to free ordinary Istkaleners, and particularly Istkalenic mothers and daughters, of the weight once forced onto their shoulders. With the collapse of the social state in the aftermath of the NSC disaster, it is more important than ever that we hold onto what gains remain - and while civil marriage doesn't necessarily threaten them, it very much has the potential to."
Light opposition notwithstanding, the issues of marriage and the labor partnership have not been contentious since the end of the occupation, making a broader public reaction or movement strongly against or for the proposal unlikely.
Housing-climate switch in new cabinet
In a last-minute change, the Statebuilders and Populists (members of the People's Party) have exchanged a cabinet portfolio, the Statebuilders taking Housing instead of Climate and the Populists Climate instead of Housing.
The switch is both a weakening of the Populists' already weak position in the cabinet and a significant concession to alleged climate denialists for the heavily climate-orientated Statebuilders, and may cause both parties to decline in popularity.
Nevertheless, while the change does even further weaken the Populists' already severely weakened set of briefs, it gives them, who already control conservation policy, almost full control over environmental policy in Istkalen, an area in which their strong stances, against strict regulation and in favor of entirely subsidy-based approaches to transition and preservation, have given them broad popularity. Similarly, although it is, indeed, a major cession of a key issue on the part of the Statebuilders, the switch gives them control over an issue which has won them significant popularity in the past, during a time in which the Statebuilders' priority is rebuilding popular support.
Virtually no one has commented on the swap. When asked for a response, Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat opted merely to call it "a procedural issue" and "a triviality." The ministers appointed to the switched briefs, Kalju Ilves and Makketis Íkalsser, for their respective parts, both insisted that it was nothing more than a matter of expertise - Ilves, Íkalsser claimed, had more experience than him with urban issues, while Íkalsser, Ilves said, had a more comprehensive and appropriate background than him in externality regulation. Even the deputies of the National Assembly seemed to be entirely blasé with regards to the issue - none appeared to notice the change at all. Kondres Uklertal, the founder of the new, right-wing populist Union of Greens, former co-leader of the Statebuilers, and outgoing Minister of Climate, remains the only prominent politician to have said anything at all with regards to it.
"The Statebuilders," he wrote in a blog post entirely dedicated to the subject of the swap,"again clearly demonstrate their complete abdication from responsibility. How can we have such people, willing to give up their principles, to sell them to the highest bidder, governing the country? I am ashamed of the role I played in creating such a monster."
In spite of the significant effects it may have on policy, the public is nevertheless unlikely to follow Mr. Uklertal in noticing the issue, and is generally expected to join the Prime Minister and National Assembly in their position of indifference.
Íkalsser, Raadik lose last-ditch lawsuit against Andrus Liiv and Marianne Sèguy
Makketis Íkalsser and Eliise Raadik, the leaders of the People's Party, have lost a last-ditch lawsuit they filed against Andrus Liiv and Marianne Sèguy in an attempt to wrest back control of the Republican Syndicalist Party they founded and Liiv and Sèguy, several months ago, seized the leadership of in a so-called "coup."
"My court," said the primary judge who presided over the case when asked to explain his decision in plain language, "found that Mr. Liiv and Ms. Sèguy's election to the leadership of the organization in question was entirely legal. That is all."
The decision in favor of Liiv and Sèguy ends a long and acrimonious battle in the courts between them and Íkalsser and Raadik, who had held that they had been unjustly removed, alongside most of the party's membership, in a far-right takeover that they further regularly posited was a part of a greater plot against the Republic.
Nevertheless, both Íkalsser and Raadik continue to assert their right to their party.
"The Republican Syndicalist Party was our creation," they wrote in their response to the decision, posted to both their personal websites. "We were its leaders; we commanded the support of its partisans. Only through undemocratic and corrupt machinations was the Liiv-Sèguy clique able to seize control of it; no matter what any court may say, they are usurpers, and they are criminals."
Liiv and Sèguy have responded only in tweets, all mocking the two's predecessors.
While both a solidification of the legitimacy of the Liiv-Sèguy leadership and a major, personal loss for both Íkalsser and Raadik, the court's decision may still help bolster the influence and popularity of the latter, whose People's Party has now moved firmly into the republican fold. Indeed, for the first time ever, many non-Populist, politically acceptable figures commented on the conflict. Liris Vesek, for example, leader of the center-right, agrarian Farmer-Greens, and a consistent critic of Íkalsser and Raadik, calling them "dirty populists," condemned the court's decision as "an attack on the construction of Istkalenic democracy," while even Inge Meier, long-time liberal partisan and certainly no friend of the Populists, called it a "dangerous normalization of creeping fascism."
In any case, however, the "loss" of the Republican Syndicalist Party to the radical right has been made, in effect, final. No longer facing the threat of legal action, the party under its new leadership is now entirely free to further cement itself, and thus the broader extreme-right, in Istkalenic politics.
No deputies for Mr. Uklertal
Kondres Uklertal's new Union of Greens may have died before it could even begin to live. Though 12 deputies of the National Assembly had previously pledged their loyalty to the movement, all have since declared their intention to remain within their respective original parties, depriving it of a parliamentary faction.
The result of threats by virtually all other political parties - even the Republican Syndicalists, around whom a cordon sanitaire has been constructed - to isolate and deny committee positions to any deputy choosing to join the new party, this collapse of support is a death blow to Uklertal, who will now not merely be unable to run candidates in November's indirect elections to renew half of the National Assembly, but also will be entirely alone and without any influence at all upon his return to parliament.
Nevertheless, he has refused to stand down, accusing the "establishment" of "plotting against [him] to promote the degradation of the country's environment and morality," insisting that he will both continue and sit independently in the National Assembly, regardless of what consequences it may bring.
The parliamentary leader of the Statebuilding Party, Hendrik Kõiv, has already announced his intention to propose a motion to expel Uklertal, which is expected to succeed with almost unanimous approval if Uklertal genuinely does choose to remain a deputy.
Why such a hard line has been drawn against Uklertal and his new party is as of yet unknown; no party has yet explained their reasons for their opposition, nor is any expected to.
Nevertheless, given that his party would have emerged, in its simultaneous environmentalism, welfarism, and social conservatism, as a competitor to both right and left, many have theorized that the rest of the parliamentary parties may have seen the proposed Union of Greens as a destabilizing threat to their positions and the relative balance that has formed in the months since the end of the NSC regime, particularly dangerous with the November elections inching ever closer.
The Kaitmulen poll commissioned by Republic for July will continue to include the Union of Greens, nevertheless, to determine their standing in the general public opinion.
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Nation
Uklertal recants earlier split from Statebuilders
Kondres Uklertal has been hospitalized after jumping out of a window in what he has since revealed to have been a fit of mania.
Kalju Ilves, Minister of Housing, a long time friend of Uklertal's, and a gay man who Uklertal, in recent days, has cited as an example of growing degeneracy in Istkalen, was with Uklertal at the time, and was the one to call emergency services after the fall.
"I knocked on his door," Ilves said in a police interrogation the content of which has since been made public. "He came into the hallway, and immediately began to rave and scream, this barrage of vituperation. He was practically foaming at the mouth. He told me that I was rot, filth, all these nasty things, that it made his skin crawl and him nauseous just to see me, all this increasingly hysterical yelling and this screaming. He started to back away, I remember, his hands out, telling me not to go near him - and then he fell out the window."
Uklertal has since revealed that he suffers from a medical disorder that predisposes him, in the absence of treatment, to episodes of mania, and had, in recent days, begun to refuse to take medication after a lower court of the Istkalenic Censorate ruled that it was "unbecoming" of Istkalenic officials to consume substances used to "control emotion," like lithium, except in cases of "immediate threat to life."
"It's simply ridiculous," he said. "To have institutions in this country that can issue such bizarre and retrograde orders - it's beyond scandalous. It's the 21st century, and still - still! - we have these uninformed, ignorant people going around and using absolute power to endanger not merely men in the government and civil service like me but also the millions of people reliant on our ability to effectively do our jobs! Attempting to ban needed medication, on so ridiculous a pretext - it's nonsensical and frightening."
Uklertal went on to reject the opinions he has espoused in the course of the past few days, announcing his intention o dissolve his Union of Greens; while he continued to position himself as a "social conservative" and a "committed environmentalist," he insisted that he was not an "importer of Reitzmic social panics" and regrets his "hurtful rhetoric."
His episode is one of the many results of the Censorate courts' most recent plan to protest government efforts to weaken them: to regularly proscribe various banal or necessary practices as "unbecoming" of officials, from tooth-brushing to blood transfusions. While government officials initially ignored the increasingly strange prohibitions, the courts' increasingly escalating threats of police action have forced them to stop doing so - to, as is clear in this case, disastrous effects.
The Ministry of State Security has since announced that all courts responsible are to be taken into "protective detention" to ensure their "continued safety."
"The public," said the minister responsible, Lauri Laakonen, "to put it bluntly, now despises these people. As it is my duty to ensure their protection, with the consent of the government, I have ordered that they be detained - just to ensure that they are entirely safe. And who knows, perhaps they'll change their minds once separated from the hot-headedness of the world-at-large."
Polling 7/7 - 8/7
conducted by Isdenek, 891 respondents (+/- 7/5-8/5)National Republican Party (center-right, in gov't): 19,4% (-4,7)
Statebuilding Party (center-left, in gov't): 16,8% (new)
Radical Democratic Party (center, in gov't): 15,9% (new)
Social Democratic Party (far-left, confidence-and-supply): 15,2% (-17,7)
Communist Party (left-wing, in gov't): 12,3% (+1,3)
People's Party (right-wing, in gov't): 8,4% (+1,9)
Republican Syndicalist Party (far-right, opposition): 4,4% (-2,1)
Farmer-Green Alliance (center-right, in gov't): 3,3% (new)
Agrarian Union (left-wing or syncretic, opposition): 2,1% (-10,1)
Union Party (far-right, opposition): 1,7 (-1,5)
Union of Greens (right-wing, opposition): 0,5% (new)approve of government: 42,3% (-13,5)
disapprove of government: 51,4% (+21,2) -
Republic
National Republicans commit to liberal democracy in Istkalen
Lawrence Ketist, General Secretary of the National Republican Party and author of the policy plank that officially committed it to a form of semi-direct democracyThe National Republicans, following the conclusion of an extraordinary congress held to confirm the leftward political course set by new leaders Katharina Beck and Riina Kruus, both from the party's "social" wing, have officially committed themselves to the establishment of a liberal democracy in Istkalen, with a new plank in their program, authored by Lawrence Ketist, their General Secretary, directing the party to support the establishment of a strong parliament alongside robust direct-democratic mechanisms like popular initiatives and referenda, underpinned by an assumption of the equality of all Istkaleners.
"I have fought," said Ketist himself upon learning of the approval of his proposed plank, "for this party to defend a real republicanism - one founded on social and political equality, one whose central purpose is to maintain that same equality - for decades. It has been, too often, a thankless labor. But today's victory makes all the toil worth it. In our Istkalen, at long last, is now a political force that truly stands for the whole nation."
The change is an extraordinary break with party tradition - long-committed to reform and Westernization, the party was nevertheless originally founded by Makketis Melitek, founder and first head of state of the modern Istkalenic republic, as an "instrument of terror," going on to be the country's single and ruling party from the collapse of its "popular front" with the Communists in 1948 to the conclusion of the Arian Wars in 1973. And though its leaders in the decades since have sought to soften and liberalize the party's image, it has never, until now, managed, or even sought, to completely cast aside its authoritarian history - even Kaisa Malk and Grete Reiner, Kruus and Beck's immediate predecessors, both members of the "democratic opposition" in Istkalen under the Social Democratic regime, saw pride in its past as necessary for electoral success.
Nevertheless, the break was long in the making. The party's left, including the "social" wing, had been pushing for an official endorsement for "real" democracy for decades; even some members of its right, especially those belonging to the economically liberal and modernizing wing of Akem Linek, had begun to voice support for a further distancing from the party's past and a rapprochement with the Western-style democracy it had long implicitly rejected. With the departure of its hard, particularly anti-liberal right for the Republican Syndicalist and later People's Party, it may have even been made an inevitability.
Whether inevitability or uncertainty, however, the party's new commitment to liberal democracy is a definite victory both for its internal left, who have managed, at long last, to move the party towards a a general acceptance of universal equality and almost full rejection of illiberal politics, for Istkalenic democrats who had been hoping for another major party to join the fully-reformist fold, and almost certainly for the reformist government of Elizabeth Íkrat, which may now have a more stable base in parliament with which it can pursue more radical policies as to do with the country's least democratic political institutions.
Yet anti-reformists, too, may stand to gain - the National Republicans may shed its remaining contingent of anti-reformist voters, who will almost certainly move to the more politically reactionary Statebuilding Party, the radical-right People's and Republican Syndicalist Parties, and the totalitarian Union. More concerning is the possibility of some particularly alienated former supporters joining what remains of the extremist, "underground" pre-war Social Democrats and restarting the failed insurgency they attempted to pursue in the waning days of the occupation.
Much may be, much can be - but what will be, or can be said with some degree of certainty will be, is a lack of change in public support or opposition to liberal democracy in Istkalen, an issue which most Istkaleners have a firm and inflexible opinion on.
Reiner calls for "Day of Remembrance" for victims of Svarnan war
Grete Reiner, Minister of Public Works and leader of the Alliance for Peace, at a rally organized by the latter institutionGrete Reiner, leader of the Alliance for Peace, a newly-founded international organization meant to organize opposition to war, support for arms control, and efforts to raise awareness of civilian uses of nuclear power, has called for the 15th and 16th of July to be "Days of Remembrance" for the victims of the war in Svarna, a one-day long military intervention led by the United Duchies and the Kingdom of Reitzmag, with the United Kingdom independently involved, in opposition to the Svarnan government.
"Now more than ever," Reiner said to a crowd of thousands at the Alliance for Peace rally in Kirelesile where she first made her demand, "we must remember the victims of senseless wars, the victims of the great powers of the modern day, the victims of the politicians and war machines which call for death to satiate their insatiable appetites for power and profit. A year and a half ago - just a year and a half ago! - our Europe was menaced by the siren-call of regime change, by the efforts of a few leaders, ravenous for blood, ravenous for an opportunity to show off their might in a spectacle of cold murder en masse, to throw their citizens and the innocents of another into a meat-grinder of their own making. The Svarnan war! Yes, the Svarnan war, that absurd, shameful episode of unbridled violence at the heart of our Europe so dear! The Svarnan war, the war of Simon Bridges and John Peter Key - the Svarnan war! How many, dead? How many, sacrificed on the pyre of plain profit? Too many - it is always too many, in every and any war."
"Let us dedicate tomorrow and today," she continued, "the 16th and the 15th, to remembering the victims of this most recent of carnages, to remembering this senseless violence and the selfish, cold reasons for its beginning! Go out onto the streets, go out into the internet, shout it from every rooftop, every account, every site physical or digital - war in our Europe was reality but a year and a half ago, and for nothing at all but power and profit! Go out and make known, as loudly as you can, the eternal shame that will fall upon those who orchestrated these massacres - say their names! Simon Bridges! John Peter Key!"
The Alliance for Peace has already commissioned the rapid creation of tens of thousands of posters, purchased online advertisements across the European Union, and organized rallies not merely in Istkalen but in those foreign nations where it has chapters, to raise awareness as broadly and as energetically as it can.
"Peace," said Reiner, "is our aim, and we will stop at nothing to achieve it."
While in and of itself seemingly but another gesture serving, generally, its aims, the effort at producing a European-wide reaction only further underlines Reiner - and the Istkalenic government's - commitment to making the Alliance for Peace a truly international organization and distinguishing the country on issues of foreign politics.
Though not as high-profile as earlier, similar drives for greater foreign involvement, like the Kirelesile Conference, it nevertheless follows the same pattern - a distinctly "anti-imperialist," or, at the very least, anti-power and international movement founded on radical and idealistic aims, a clear effort to distinguish Istkalen from the major blocs and cement it, yet again, as a part and perhaps leader of a "non-aligned" bloc. Coupled with a renewed push for foreign engagement - Elizabeth Íkrat has proposed a meeting for rapprochement with Czech Slavia, and is rumored to be off to Madrid, while Minister of Finance Indras Irakemar and Minister of the Interior Kuldar Loime have already attended a high-profile EU conference on climate and other general political issues - the new rhetoric on this particular front is almost certainly an attempt to recover what is widely seen as lost Istkalenic influence in foreign politics, return to the days of "non-aligned socialism," and, perhaps, regain protection against a Reitzmag that now seems likely to obtain nuclear weapons, while gaining further credibility among the Istkalenic people to better bolster an increasingly controversial domestic policy program.
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Republic
Korhonen's coup
The conservative experiment of Esketal Indretek has come, at short last, to ignominious end: deputy leader and President of the National Assembly Ursula Korhonen has seized control of the Agrarian Union's parliamentary faction.
Motivated by a desire to stop the rightward movement of the organization and return it to the socialist and “anti-imperialist” principles on which it was founded, Korhonen secretly convinced and whipped its deputies into holding a sudden vote to remove the Indreskist leadership and replace it with a left-wing slate of her own, albeit one almost identical to that which was in place upon the first meeting of parliament.
Korhonen has characterized her own actions as a "coup," though "necessary for the political survival of the agrarian movement," calling them "authoritarian...quasi legal" and "desperate measures" she had restorted to only after alleged extensive negotiations with Indretek made in an attempt to more peacefully moderate his efforts to turn the historically reformist Union into a conservative, "patron"-aligned movement had failed.
"I will say it plainly: I am a usurper," she said at a press conference held shortly after the purge of the Indrestekists from factional leadership. "But I usurp the power of a wrecker, a criminal - the power of a man who wanted to use our country's most honest institution, the only institution of and for the real producing class of this nation, its farmers and craftsmen, for and of its very soul, to allow the compradors and criminals, the whole of that parasitical, foreign elite, to suck the people dry. It has pained me to do so, but it remains - for the sake of our dear, weeping country - necessary."
The parliamentary faction has moved to readopt the platform of 2022, distinctly left-wing and progressive, calling for the return of natural resources to the commons, the creation of a universal employment guarantee and minimum "social" wage, and the readoption of hardline "non-alignment" and anti-imperialism in foreign affairs.
Indretek himself has attempted to protest the seizure of power, publishing a statement calling Korhonen "a Reitzmo-Vardic pig" to his personal blog; his allies, however, have abandoned him en masse: almost all have suggested that Indretek is, varyingly, insane or corrupt and pledged their full support to Korhonen, asking their surrogates and supporters to do the same.
While leadership of the Union's actual political organization remains in the control of the Indretekists, most, then, expect the vast majority of local affiliates, already disenchanted with a political direction that has left them irrelevant and unpopular and now almost certainly to follow the anti-Indretek direction that effectively the whole of the party’s leadership, current and former, has set, to pledge their loyalty to Korhonen.
The jettisoning of the conservatives and return to leftist reformism appears to confirm rumors that a rift between the historically-aligned socialists and patronists had formed in the Agrarian Union in the aftermath of the departure of most of its party-affiliates and the implosion in popular support that followed; the vast majority of Istkaleners, however, including many within the Union itself, believe that the entire affair has been an act of theater meant to rehabilitate the organization, now almost completely discredited as a political force. Any change in level of support is therefore highly unlikely; bleeding to the Radical Democrats, Statebuilders, and particularly Farmer-Greens is expected to continue unabated.
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Republic
Kalessed resigns
Ilmaras Kalessed, Head of State of the Republic of Istkalen, has announced her intention to resign her post on 9 October, citing "health issues."
"I am," she said at the surprise presser where she revealed her decision to the public, "an old woman. 77 years I have to my name, 47 of which I have spent in the active defense of the values of this country, of our Republic, whether as a partisan of the Agrarian Union, a dissident, independent, writing out her indignation from prison, or, yes, as I am now, a Head of State. I regret none of it. There is no higher calling than that of the cause of our Istkalen, no better way to spend the decades given by the divine to each and every one of us, and I wish I had the capacity to continue."
"But these 47 years of work, these 77 years of life - they have, as they are bound to do, worn me down. I am no longer the quick, agile woman I was in my youth; my age, the stresses I have endured through the years, have caused my body and mind alike to revolt against me. I ache, through the day, through the night, and see and think and hear and feel as though in a perpetual fog, everything indistinct, muddled. I have tried to fight my way through it, to overcome, as has always been my way. But it has become increasingly clear to me, as the struggle thickens, worsens, that the fight is ending. What I was given at birth no longer serves the purpose in life I have found; I have fallen apart, and what once were my capacities are now simply no more. To go on, with an impossible war increasingly farcical, with delusion and what would be sure to be increasingly escalating feats of pageantry - a great collage of lies spiraling outwards, all to mislead the Istkalenic people, to make them believe that headlessness is headedness, that heedlessness is heedful, that black is white and white is black."
"This I could not consent to. It would be against my nature, against the people, against all good and the dictates set down by the divine. It has therefore become an absolute necessity, moral and physical, that I tender my resignation. I do so with shame, with sadness - but nevertheless with firm conviction, the firmest in my life so full with firm conviction, that it is what is right for the Istkalenic people. I will remain in my position until the legislature can elect a new Head of State, on the 9th of October, in order to prevent disorder in the interim - one final act of service for my nation dear."
The announcement was received by almost all with shock. Kalessed was widely seen as the guarantor of the Republic, the only political figure with popularity and influence enough to maintain the democracy established with the overthrow of the NSC - and the question of her departure widely discussed, likewise, being the question of the survival of her Republic, entirely unthinkable.
But the unthinkable - in spite of what seem to be even Kalessed's own concerns of a seizure of power on the part of any of the many anti-republican forces embedded in the Istkalenic state - has, with her decision, become thinkable, close, even, to certainty. And it may now be time to begin ringing the funeral bells for long-belabored, shortlived Istkalenic democracy.
