URL Convention for the 62nd Cosă

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

Azul es benveschti, à toct vaes amíci, cünpartizaes, colegas, es cüncitaxhiens!

Welcome to the second Party Convention of the Union of Free Reformists. Once per Cosă term, our party gathers to publicly conduct its internal debates, assess our platform and organization, and make the case for the nation to entrust to us the privilege to govern Talossa in the next term.

This Cosă term has so far been a tumultuous one for the country at best, though we in the URL have played a critical role in calming the situation. In the chaos following the last election, we saw what can happen when personal feuds and bad blood are allowed to rule the day. But even when others may scold us or prefer to work with extremists than with us, we stand on principle. In this case, the rather fundamental principle that Talossa deserves a stable government instead of chaos. To this end, we kept the door open for negotiations, which led to the announcement of the "passive confidence" deal last month. We in the URL know that collaboration is a more effective path than division, and we put that into practice -- while also practicing sound judgment on who to work with.

In making this deal, we have also gained a valuable victory in our pursuit of a more democratic Talossa. The Pseudo-Real Cosă Act, put forward by our good friend Sir Marcel Tafial, has managed to bring the size of the Cosă down below the size of the entire country's population, transforming it from a parody of a parliament into an institution of sensible representation. This was a change that was shown to be welcome to a wide swath of the Ziu, and it's not the only one. One of our next priorities will be to advocate for a more personalized form of proportional representation. Giving voters better control over who exactly represents them in the Cosă and transferring more power from party bosses to the people has proven to be a change that has received broad support from around the country; people like a democracy which they can hold accountable! Our first victory is something we've managed from Opposition -- now imagine how much good we could bring with a majority!

The Democracy Agenda is of course fantastic, but it is also a more of a legislative focus for our party. What about the executive branch? Let's look a bit at the current state of the nation's government.

As already noted, it's been quite the chaotic environment. The nation's government has already almost collapsed twice since the last election: once before it even took office, and a second time just before the close of the February Clark. Without the URL to come in and provide stability, we'd be preparing for an election right now. Yet behind all the hubbub regarding the government's survival, there's been surprisingly little substance:

• There's been a lot of "busy work", so to speak -- translating the Seneschal's List into Talossan, taking a plank from the URL platform and giving the Zuavs a visual refresh, that sort of thing.
• While this government has finally succeeded in welcoming their first immigrants, we've not yet hit "replacement-level" immigration to recoup lapsed citizens after the last election, much less the "double our population" levels the Seneschal argued for as an alternative to reducing the Ziu to more sensible numbers.
• Particularly egregious is the apparent "stacking" of roles going on in Cabinet. While we've actually argued that some stacking is ok -- smaller roles makes for more of them, so it makes sense to have people with multiple titles -- what we're seeing is more of "government by one". The Seneschal has himself noted that the proportion of votes for his party to people capable of "doing the work" is unsustainably high - as shown by not only the dormant Cabinet, but the difficulty in getting Government MZs to endorse the "passive confidence" deal on the last Clark.

Substituting one hyperactive politician for a party is not only unsustainable; it's strengthens the argument for "personalized proportional representation" to make sure votes for parties translate into "teams" for government.

Meanwhile, we in the URL don't need to wonder -- there's no central leader who does everything themselves here, either because they want to, or because they need to. We're a team, and we know that the old saying is true: teamwork really does make the dream work. We take this seriously enough that our party has a collective leadership structure, to say nothing of our regular conventions. We're the Party of Talossan Democracy, and we lead by setting an example. And over the next few weeks, we'll be showing everyone how it's done, yet again.

¡Vivadra Talossa democrätic!