News Media of Istkalen

[Istkalen]

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.

[Istkalen]

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.

[Istkalen]

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 Malk

STATEBUILDING 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 Virejane

Uklertal 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.

[Istkalen]

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.

[Istkalen]

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)

[Istkalen]

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 democracy

The 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 institution

Grete 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.

[Istkalen]

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.

[Istkalen]

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.

[Istkalen]

Republic

Censorate reform fails

Elizabeth Íkrat's gambit has failed: by an overwhelming majority, 57 to 43 percent, Istkaleners have voted to retain the Istkalenic Censorate in its present form.

Responsible for maintaining the "moral and political" integrity of the Republic, the Censorate - one of the main descendants of the medieval Lirisian monastic order, a secretive, para-statal institution whose internal workings remain generally opaque to the public - held, and now will continue to hold, broad authority to veto legislation, impeach officials, and establish restrictions on the conduct of state dignitaries with virtually no oversight or checks on power. Deeply reactionary in its political inclination, Íkrat and many others belonging to the democratic sector of Istkalenic politics had come to see it as the primary impediment to Westernization and the establishment of a stable, parliamentary democracy - an understanding that it was only too happy to confirm, pronouncing, in what was in effect its response, its wholesale rejection of "foreign politics," proposing a rigidly authoritarian system of government in which its highest dignitaries would hold ultimate, virtually total power over the affairs of state, and devising increasingly bizarre "moral regulations" for politicians - one went as far as to prohibit bathing and showering - meant to give it a legal pretext to remove democratically-aligned officials from office.

Íkrat and her allies, believing that the Censorate had, through these increasingly erratic actions, delegitimized itself in the eyes of the public, had sought to use the people to remove this threat most dire to their ideological project and continued power. But with prices rising, visible corruption mounting, and - perhaps most importantly of all - the Minister of Finance, Indras Irakemar having attempted to force through unpopular welfare cuts and a framework for incorporation - it became an impossibility. Democracy being so tied to their government, their government being so tied to this building social and political malaise - and the Censorate, the traditional defender of clean government and the traditional, welfarist, étatist, guild and corvée-based economy, so well placed to serve as foil - they simply could not defend their political project.

The Censorate has taken the vote as both a general rejection of Western democracy and a green light for its own plans for the Istkalenic state; its President, Ursula Orlich, made a statement shortly after the finalization of the vote count in which she made clear the body would begin to act more directly to "reform" Istkalenic government and place limits on the country's nascent democracy.

"The people," she said, "have rejected the fragmentation, the corruption, the decadence offered them by the compradors who usurp the government. Yet again, they have shunned the excess of the West and affirmed our national tradition: duty, not rights, order, not libertinianism, sobriety, not drunkenness. No longer can Elizabeth Íkrat and her friends, feasting off the hard work of the country they seek every day to defraud and to sell off to the highest bidder, point to them to justify their butcheries and depravities; they and the diseased ideologies they have imported in their desperate attempt to sicken this nation and its people most superior have been cast out to wither and die. And wither and die they will - we will make sure of that. There will be no talk of democracy once we are done. Parties, parliament, politics - there will be no more of any of that, after us The words of Liris shall prevail, and through our judicious reforms, clean and national government will prevail forever in this country."

Íkrat herself is due to address the nation tomorrow morning; what she intends to say is as of yet entirely unknown. Head of State Ilmaras Kalessed, for her part, although strongly supportive of the referendum effort, from beginning to end, has indicated not merely that she will not speak on the issue, but that she will make no public appearances, addresses, or even statements until she leaves office. No other politicians of the democratic sector have made any comment on whether or not they will comment on the issue.

[Istkalen]

Republic

Írenet Isteresskemar (re)founds Democratic Movement

Months of mud-flinging and petty infighting in the Farmer-Green Alliance are now, it seems, to come to an end: Minister of Foreign Affairs Írenet Isteresskemar, long at loggerheads, in spite of her nominal departure from politics, with liberal party leader and former Minister of the Interior Liris Vesek, has announced that she will be taking the hard-right nationalist faction around her figure out of the party to found a new political force of her own - the Democratic Movement.

"We have had enough," said Ísteresskemar at the rally where she made the decision public, "of the weakness of Liris Vesek. At every turn, she, with her so-called liberal sensibilities, has tried to make us bow down before the onslaught of decadence and degradation that face us - every type of degeneracy she has condoned and sought to make acceptable, too fearful to stand up against any of it, inviting, through her acquiescence, into our country the demons that have consumed the West."

"It has thus," she continued, "come time for us to depart. No longer can the patriots, the sober and hard-working people of our good Istkalen, stand behind this ineffectual idiot. No -we must take matters into our own hands, and forge for ourselves, once again, a movement, a strong movement, founded in the rustic, pure values that we know have kept our families and country alike healthy through the years. Is it thus, with conviction in the power of the traditions and the real people of my beloved country, then, that I return to politics and announce the foundation of the Democratic Movement: a new party that will stand forever and truly resolutely in the defense of the Istkalenic people."

The Democratic Movement will begin its existence with 30 deputies in the National Assembly and roughly half of the Farmer-Green Alliance's local affiliates. Most political experts expect it to command the support of roughly 5-10% of the population, with a ceiling of perhaps up to 20% and a floor, at lowest, at 3%, taking right-wing conservatives away from not merely the Farmer-Greens, but also adjacent parties, from the Populists to the Republican Syndicalists, for whom this political contingent is a fairly major constituency but who nevertheless have made no clear attempts to appeal to it.

For the time being, in spite of the strong, anti-Western line it appears to be taking, the Movement is expected to remain in government without major concessions; Ísteresskemar is known to value her current post as Minister of Foreign Affairs highly, having enjoyed almost full control over the country's foreign policy for what is now almost three years, and is thus thought to be unlikely to abandon her position unless actively forced to.

No figures within the main body of the Farmer-Green Alliance have yet reacted to Ísteresskemar's split, nor are any expected to - though the conflict in the party was an open secret, Vesek and her liberal allies have consistently maintained that Ísteresskemar has been an extra-political figure since her resignation from the party in April, and are not expected to abandon this line.

National Republicans adopt "statist" economic policy

The National Republican Party, party leader Katharina Beck, following a vote of the party congress, has announced, will be running on a "statist" economic policy at the next national election.

"We are," she said to a crowd of thousands in Kirelesile's Revolution Square, "the party of the republic - the party of duty, the party of order, the party of virtue. This identity, these values - we must hold to them with ardor, in every sphere, if we are to remain honest and true."

"I have sought," she continued, "to lead this party out of the abyss, out of the endless compromises and confusions that led it to abandon its foundations in favor of corruption and compradorism and back to these values so high. And already, after just a few months, have we accomplished so much together. We have done away with the old system of machines and local affiliates in favor of a central, unified party organization that plays by the rules. We have swept away the rigid adherence to an ossified, imported conservatism that subordinated the people to clerics and rent-seekers. We have moved away from the dual doctrines of cultural Westernization and political authoritarianism in order to reaffirm the principle whose defence we were created for - the unquestionable supremacy of an indigenous and republican order."

"Now, it comes time to make the final sweep - and make the final sweep we will do. On one last front does our party remain marked by the degradations of the years of opportunism: we continue to support the cancerous individualism of the economic sphere that grows and eats away at our society, through which every man and woman alike somehow finds himself, herself, entitled without duty, through which every man and woman somehow finds himself, herself, liberated of their bonds to society, through which every man and woman is somehow enabled to take from the whole without commensurately giving back. I do not have to speak of it exactly, nor do I have any intention of ever putting its filthy name in my mouth; we know what it is and of the ruin it has wrought, the collapse it has brought to every conceivable corner of our Istkalen."

"It is thus with happiness and pride that I announce that, through all our efforts combined, our party at long last has abandoned its misguided affirmation of this toxic state of affairs in favor of a line far truer to its past, its values, and far better for the people to whom it will always be loyal: we are abandoning total individualism, which always rots and destroys, in favor of of an economic republic just as we have a political republic, where the individual will is subordinated to the needs of the whole: duty, order, and virtue over the libertinian excess to which we have for too long given ourselves - a statist approach to the economic issue, in which expectation, coordination, and planning, organized and promoted by the republican organs of the popular will corporate, will take precedence over the chaos of the clashing individual wills which parasitically suck to dominate, to weaken, and then to, invariably, kill."

While it is clearly Beck's intention to cast the change in policy as a return to form, it is, in reality, an extreme break with tradition. The National Republican Party was founded in part in explicit rejection of statist, centralizing economic policy, with one of the central planks of its original manifesto being the restoration of the traditional craft economy, founded on the individual, through the radical redistribution of property and the re-establishment of the guilds. Moreover, it pursued, in the 26 years it ruled the country as the only legal party, avenues of policy often radical and damaging in nature to this end, even against the mounting evidence pointing towards profound failure. So attached, in fact, is it to the idea of an economy of independent producers that it is widely seen by academics as the originator of the concept in its modern form.

But though Beck may be being dishonest with regards to her justifications, she is being shrewd in both pushing the party away from its traditions and shrouding her push in tradition. As economic inequality and dysfunction both grow, Istkaleners - especially young Istkaleners, un-and-underemployed at markedly higher rates than the rest of the Istkalenic population - have grown increasingly and now exponentially more dissatisfied with the general structure of the country's economy, and just as more curious about new alternatives. With alternatives having been uniformly represented by ultra-radical political forces - the ultra-capitalist, ultra-liberal Social Democrats and the ultra-clerical, ultra-traditionalist Union most of all - however, this curiosity, present as it may be, has failed to fully manifest itself. By both moving itself fully out of the camp of national economic orthodoxy while still presenting a relatively conservative image, the National Republicans may be able to capitalize on this unanswered dissatisfaction.