Looking Forward to the Future: The URL for the 63rd Cosă

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

As we begin to look towards the end of this Cosă term, we in the URL want to take stock of the issues currently facing the nation. Make no mistake, we still intend to campaign on the Democracy Agenda, our package of long-overdue reform. But we're not going to campaign solely on the Democracy Agenda -- we need a Government that can work towards its goals while also addressing the problems of the day. And what are some of these problems? Well, to be blunt, a lot of them can be boiled down to double standards. In this 62nd Cosă term, the Government of Baron Davinescu has repeatedly acted in direct opposition to his campaign promises.

On Transparency: The Baron and his party made "transparency" one of the main themes of the last election. He made claims that the previous Government was hiding something over immigration, and he made promises to be open and honest in government; both the claims and the promises clearly resonated with voters. But when it comes to who sits in the Cosă for the current government, the Baron has gone before the Cort pü Inalt to argue that the transparency to voters only extends to the election itself -- after that, what the party boss says, the party boss gets. We in the URL feel that if you saw the list of Progressive Alliance candidates in the last election, decided you supported those people representing you in the Cosă, and voted for them, that's your right as a voter -- but that's the list you should get as your representation!

To be clear, the Government can't be blamed for two of its leading Cosă members dropping out, but we believe their voters should have had a say in who would replace them. We're also not disputing the outcome of the Cort's advisory opinion -- we think it makes sense given the current wording of the Organic Law, to the point that URL Secretary Miestră Schivă noted this possible result in a brief to the Cort. What we're saying is that the opinion shows the need for drastic reform. The law as worded allows for party leaders to make a mockery of accountability to voters between elections -- and that's a good reason to change the law. Regardless of which party list you vote for on the ballot, the URL has long advocated for your right to be represented by those people in the Cosă -- not whoever the party boss says you'll get.

On Immigration: Another key theme of the Baron's campaign in November was immigration. Unfortunately, since taking office, the Baron has managed to lose more citizens than we've had immigrate.
- Seven new citizens have been naturalized since the Baron's government was appointed in mid-December.
- We are now past two full months without any naturalizations.
- Eight former citizens lost their citizenship after failing to vote in recent elections.
- Two more have renounced their citizenship, including the Baron's Attorney General, who renounced in solidarity with a sexual harasser unanimously condemned by the Ziu.

That's a net loss of citizens so far this term. For a guy who spent most of the previous term comparing Talossa's population trends to a house on fire, the Baron seems to be taking the current decline awfully coolly.

In the last term, we argued that levels of immigration are not the direct result of Government action or inaction. The current Seneschal disagreed, and won over many voters by falsely accusing the previous Government of deliberately ignoring immigration and recruitment. A few months ago, he even met concerns about the lack of election candidates by blithely assuring us that there would be no problem keeping the Ziu properly staffed if we doubled the population – something he seemed to consider realistic, with the right government. We are now further from the Baron's own population goals than we were when he took office -- can he claim to be that "right government"?

Now that immigration is his responsibility, however, he has claimed that immigration levels are based on luck -- effectively admitting that everything he blamed the previous Government for was wrong. There is no shame in being wrong. There is shame in winning an election by telling a simple untruth, and then not correcting the record when found out.

On top of this, when the URL suggests possible remedies for the nation's stagnating immigration, they are evidently ignored. We argue that one valuable source of prospective citizens would be political simulationists -- people who engage in sort of "model government"-type situations online. Some of these people are already part of the micronational world, some may be participants in online games such as NationStates, but wherever these people can be found, we ought to be trying to recruit them with the appeal of Talossa's long-running and substantial political system. Why aren't we? Well, it's apparent that these folks and their political interest would go against the Baron's desire to keep Talossan politics apolitical. We've called him out on this contradiction before, and it is apparent his apolitical desires are now choking the country of citizens.

On Active Leadership: One of the duties of a leader is fixing things that don't work. Sometimes this means changing policy within the boundaries of current law; sometimes it means changing the law to allow for better policy. As it is, legislative activity from the Government has dried up completely. Should we take this to mean the Government thinks the nation is in fine shape as it is, or do they intend to put out policy changes to address our problems? If the latter, why have they not done so?

On Concentrating Power: Perhaps the worst of the Seneschal's double standards so far has been the concentration of power. In the last election, he criticized the previous Government for "stacking" -- people holding multiple Cabinet portfolios in order to balance manpower and workload. Some stacking, of course, is understandable, especially when the work is divided among many positions. However, the Seneschal is now into the territory we've said he's been aiming for all along: "Government by One Person". Of the ten Cabinet posts, he now holds five of them personally -- half the Government in one man's hands.

- Seneschal (obviously)
- Minister of Immigration (officially appointed himself to the role)
- Minister of Defence (holding de facto as he never appointed anyone else)
- Minister of Public Records (holding de facto as he never appointed anyone else)
- Avocat-Xheneral (holding de facto after his previous A-X resigned in solidarity with the sexual harasser as noted above)

We in the URL believe that democracy should be a "team sport"; that a successful party should be a team rather than a one-man band. This is why we defend party lists and call for other Ziu reforms, to make sure the voters are choosing a team for government, rather than placing the power into the hands of a strongman. In contrast, when the Baron is in power, to paraphrase an old French saying: el parti, es el Governamaintsch, c'è lo.

To sum up, these are the key issues currently facing the nation, on which the Union of Free Reformists will campaign for a Cosă majority in the next election:

• Ziu reform to shift to a system where voters chose candidates as well as parties.
• Immigration to target sources like politics simulators, and to target quality (which we can control) rather than quantity (which we cannot).
• Team government rather than the dominance of a single personality.