That second FreeDems email in full

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

 Azul!

Estimadăs es estimats cüncitaxhiens da Talossa:

Once again, I hope this letter finds you well in these strange and uncertain times, and let's cut to the chase:

Please vote for the FREE DEMOCRATS OF TALOSSA in the election for the 57th Cosa, which ENDS on April 1st.

In my last email, I discussed the most important priority that the Free Democrats will have in the upcoming Cosa – finally restoring some unaccountability to our apathetic, mostly absent and politically partisan Monarchy. Our second main principle is cutting red-and-green tape – repealing laws and undoing bureaucracies that make it hard to be Talossan.

Many have made justified criticisms of a disappointing level of activity from the outgoing Government. I've made such criticisms myself (and seen them quoted back at me by our opponents!) But what is perhaps not obvious unless you've been inside the Government itself is how hard it is for any Talossan government to do anything, because of legal and technical constraints.

Talossa's laws and our "machinery of governance" are, in our experience, top-heavy, too complicated, and require too many people to co-ordinate to make any progress. Quite often, if one person becomes inactive for whatever reason, that puts a roadblock in front of everything. For instance, our Government was delayed for almost a month in starting because the King couldn't even get it together to swear the new Seneschal in. (Eventually an Uppermost Cort Justice had to do it.) Another example is our online presence – our National Website and National Database are incredibly complex, require specialist knowledge to run, and therefore become useless if that specialist knowledge isn't around for any reason. And they haven't been, for most of this term.

Our opponents seem to think that what went wrong in the last term was a simple "failure of will" – that if you just get into office and "hereby order" things to happen, tinpot-dictator style, they'll happen. They're in for a rude awakening if they get elected, when they see how complex "the machine of governance" has gotten – and how many of the levers they want to pull just don't work.

What the Free Democrats will prioritise, if we form the next Government, is to go on a massive spree of repealing and simplifying laws and processes. You shouldn't have to be an IT professional, a lawyer, or a full-timer to do Talossa. Our vision is for a Talossa whose government and administration are drastically simplified, so more can be done more easily by fewer people.

We want to downsize the number of "warm bodies" required to run the Talossan state. We want fewer Cabinet ministries, fewer offices or institutions which are there to stop things happening rather than to make things happen. Currently, new citizens are discouraged from activity because of how complex everything seems. If we really want the current boom in activity to continue, we have to change that.

That's all for now. Please write back if you have any questions or comments for me or the other Free Democrats. I would also ask you nicely to vote for our excellent candidates for the Senäts, should you live in the relevant provinces:

• Txoteu Davinescu for Maricopa;
• Ián Plätschisch for Maritiimi-Maxhestic;
• Gödafrieu Valcádac'h for Fiova.

Restéu voastră per la ImagiNaziun,

Miestră Schivă

Party Secretary, Free Democrats of Talossa



P.S. I thought you'd like to see this rather nice testimonial to my record on Wittenberg:

"Miestra... has been the author of a huge amount of legislation to simplify and reform the way things like the criminal code and a bunch of other parts of the law work.  She incorporated the input of others and worked hard to make it happen, and it really improved things.  It has been a bright point of this Government." (https://wittenberg.talossa.com/index.php?topic=1027.msg9994#msg9994)