NationStates

So! Leader of Tangatarehua! Whoever you are... Since I won't spoil myself with a tourist site... Just what is your stance on brinkmanship and backing foreign policy with military force, hence, insuring the survival of a nation without having to go to war? As in, you show that you are more than willing to go to war to defend your interests, even if it would lead to the mutual destruction of all parties involved?

Gonswanza wrote:

So! Leader of Tangatarehua! Whoever you are... Since I won't spoil myself with a tourist site... Just what is your stance on brinkmanship and backing foreign policy with military force, hence, insuring the survival of a nation without having to go to war? As in, you show that you are more than willing to go to war to defend your interests, even if it would lead to the mutual destruction of all parties involved?

-Laura Ortiz

Greetings to you, Rangatira Te Rata Te Rongomau. I am Antonio Sánchez, European Minister of Commerce. Given the importance of us Europeans to establish relations with nations of worthy trust in both the economic and political spheres, I wanted to know which are your most important exports? Do you apply tariffs when trading foreign or import goods?
Can your citizens open private businesses and trade abroad without state intervention? And how do you see the opening of foreign companies on your soil?

European Federation Reunified wrote:

Greetings to you, Rangatira Te Rata Te Rongomau. I am Antonio Sánchez, European Minister of Commerce. Given the importance of us Europeans to establish relations with nations of worthy trust in both the economic and political spheres, I wanted to know which are your most important exports? Do you apply tariffs when trading foreign or import goods?
Can your citizens open private businesses and trade abroad without state intervention? And how do you see the opening of foreign companies on your soil?

- Antonio Sánchez, European Minister of Commerce

Al Madhaa wrote:snip

Honourable Badr Zainal,

I am very grateful for your polite request and I am more than happy to oblige you with the information you seek.

Under the current legal framework any citizen or indeed non-citizen who wishes to enter into a symbolic or religious union ("marriage") is absolutely free to do so and their rights will be respected without reservation. However, the current settings mean that government will not intervene or act as a legal arbiter in the event of, for example, internuptial conflict. It also means that married citizens will have the same rights and responsibilities as non-married citizens, no more and no less. For example, in matters of taxation, all citizens are taxed as individuals and the government does not generally recognise joint assets.

Consequently, the onus is on the married couple themselves to make arrangements for the distribution of assets in the event of death or an end of the relationship and to do so as a private contract, as one would expect of a business partner. For example, a couple may choose to get "married" as per their religious customs and then set up a trust to hold their family assets. This would be legal but the terms of dissolution of the trust would have to be negotiated privately by the couple.

Regarding children, it should be noted that in our culture it is more common for children to be raised in a more communal environment and usually by their grandparents rather than their parents directly; the western concept of a 'nuclear family' seldom applies here. As such laws around the guardianship of children are the same as they were before the abolition of marriage: Guardianship would revert first to the extended Whanau (family) and then to the child's Hapu (sub-tribe) before, as a worst case scenario, reverting to the wider Iwi (tribe) or community (that is the equivalent of a ward of the state).

In response to your question about the reasoning of this decision, I would have to be very tactful with my wording as I am conventionally expected to remain politically neutral and my only role in the decision making process was to sign into law a bill passed by the Whare o Tangata (Parliament).

My understanding of the political machinations of the decision was that Ropu Ripera [the Liberal Party], who had a Parliamentary plurality at the time, attempted to pass a bill that would legalise homosexual marriage but were unable to gain support from other political parties. An MP for Whakapaipai [a right-wing libertarian party] attempted to poison the bill by amending it to abolish marriage altogether claiming it a colonial sham. Ropu Ripera called their bluff and managed to successfully convince a majority of Parliamentarians to vote for legislation abolishing marriage altogether.

I do hope this answers all of your questions but if you require greater elucidation I would be honoured to oblige.

He pono taku korero, in the name of the Empress,

Nga mihi,
Te Rata Te Rongomau
Most Honourable Rangatira of the Empire of Tangatarehua

Al Madhaa wrote:

• i wrote half of this in my dreams and woke up at 4 am to write the other half, promptly knocked out and did not remember anything until mid-afternoon. i hope this is somehow legible and does not read like a fever dream as a result

Vallermoore wrote:Greetings, Most Honorable Rangatira.

Would your country allow sapient ponies from Vallermoore to come to your country as tourists? They have plenty of money to spend in your nation if you let them.

Ambassador Chucknin, Vallermoorian Foreign Ministry.

Tena Koe, Honourable Ambassador Chucknin,

Anyone with a biometric passport is automatically entitled to visit Tangatarehua as a tourist for up to 30 days. We will welcome anyone and deign to show them the best hospitality they can possibly be shown.

As a caveat however, I cannot guarantee that we would have the facilities to meet the physical needs of such beings, but if they are willing to visit in spite of this then we are more than willing to host them as tourists.

Nga mihi,
Te Rata Te Rongomau
Most Honourable Rangatira of the Empire of Tangatarehua

To the Most Honorable Rangatira,

It is an honor to have the opportunity to discuss matters with you. I, as well as many officials in Sagrea, have inquired much about the culture and practices of Tangatarehua. We understand that the current government would be classified as a sort of "hybrid" regime, which currently makes effort to transition into a more full democratic system, as well as maintaining a modern society. However, we also are aware of the proud culture and traditionalist standpoint many hold to preserve culture within the nation, something Sagreans can stand in solidarity with in our own motives. In our curiosity, I ask how you think the government and people of Tangatarehua can best balance the ideas and practices of tradition and progressivism, a noted concern here in Sagrea. Perhaps we will be able to further understand how to reconcile this.

We hope to further our relations with your nation. Thank you for your time.

Yours truly,

Brak Zdech Ilstva,
Supreme Leader of the National State of Sagrea

Sagrea wrote:

To the Most Honorable Rangatira,

It is an honor to have the opportunity to discuss matters with you. I, as well as many officials in Sagrea, have inquired much about the culture and practices of Tangatarehua. We understand that the current government would be classified as a sort of "hybrid" regime, which currently makes effort to transition into a more full democratic system, as well as maintaining a modern society. However, we also are aware of the proud culture and traditionalist standpoint many hold to preserve culture within the nation, something Sagreans can stand in solidarity with in our own motives. In our curiosity, I ask how you think the government and people of Tangatarehua can best balance the ideas and practices of tradition and progressivism, a noted concern here in Sagrea. Perhaps we will be able to further understand how to reconcile this.

We hope to further our relations with your nation. Thank you for your time.

Yours truly,

Brak Zdech Ilstva,
Supreme Leader of the National State of Sagrea

Honourable Supreme Leader,

I am honoured to have received your message and I hope you will be pleased with my reply.

The question you have asked is perhaps the most common dilemma faced by any political system, including that of the most democratic of nations. What you have alluded to is the dichotomy between conservatism and progressivism - the need to change the status quo versus the need to protect it.

As such I cannot and will not dare to comment on which direction is the 'correct' direction for a country to move in and I would certainly never dare to give advice to a foreign head of state on the internal affairs of another sovereign state as I am entirely ignorant of what is right for the circumstances of another nation.

What I can do is share the experience of our nation and compare and contrast it with that of other nations throughout history.

Our current constitution was drafted in 1979, following Tangatarehua's emphatic defeat in the South Pacific War and the fall of the Tangatarehua Imperial Rule Association [which was a fascist military junta that had ruled the country as an extremely authoritarian dictatorship since 1943].

It was drafted by our former Empress, the late Awhinatia te hunga rawakore, who was herself a true proponent of democratic reform and an anti-fascist but who was also working under pressure from a coalition of western powers who occupied Tangatarehua and were pressuring the country to transition to a western-style democracy.

The Empress, in her wisdom and knowing her people well, understood that if Tangatarehua became a democracy there and then it would not work - in fact, it would probably lead to a return to fascism as that was widely supported at the time by a heavily brainwashed and uneducated population. She also understood that the post-war desperation and fascism could lead to the rise of extreme ideologies like communism and plunge our nation into an even worse form of totalitarianism.

Thus she chose to retain my office, that of the Rangatira, but without a military in order to build a sense of social cohesion around a tradition that has already lasted over a thousand years in this country and would thus be accepted by most of the population. But in order to prevent a return to the years of human rights abuses, she ensured that a freely elected legislature would have the ability to air the grievances of the common people and speak on their interests.

Unlike previous attempts at creating such a body (after all, we had our first Parliament in 1835), she also gave the House of Representatives the power to control the national budget, thus giving the democratically elected legislature unprecedented control over government policy and making Tangatarehua a de facto democracy.

Balanced against this though was the retention of the Rangatira and my own department, which ensures not only a continuation of tradition but also acknowledges the desire for an executive branch comprised of well-educated technocrats to safeguard against some of the populist excesses of democracy.

This is by no means unprecedented in history - for most countries the transition toward democracy is a very long one. For Great Britain it took nearly 1000 years of very slow reform. Democracy is something we sincerely aspire to, but at this point in time we retain what we perceive as the best of both worlds - and as such have something of a guided democracy.

I hope that this information, long-winded as it is, will be useful to you in making considerations regarding your own future direction. I am not sure how analogous our situations are.

If you require further elucidation or clarification, I will be only too happy to oblige.

Nga mihi,
Te Rata Te Rongomau
Most Honourable Rangatira of the Empire of Tangatarehua

To the Most Honourable Rangatira,

I, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, am very pleased and thoroughly honoured to have the opportunity to ask you some questions.

My first question is asked personally on behalf of the Prime Minister, who was unfortunately unable to join me for the drafting of these questions due to a prior engagement with a voting machine company. The question being, what is your view on Drongonia as a whole? Do you find the nation favourable? He asks this acknowledging that our two nations are near polar opposites of each other, with Tangatarehua having a strong ethnocentricism for its native Maori people, while we share much the same attitude, but in regards to our majority European population.

The second question is regarding liberalism in Tangatarehua and is one I've been wanting to ask you myself. Would you consider Tangatarehua a traditional 'liberal democracy' in the Western sense? As an outsider, this is likely not the case, but I'd like to get an insight from you about not only the current state of the nation's politics and social standpoint, but where they might go in the future. I suppose as an addendum to that question, do you see Tangatarehua skewing more leftwards or rightwards in the future?

I hope we haven't asked too much of you, and I thank you in advance for your time.

Warmest regards,
Hon. Katy Pace
MP for Halver,
Minister for Foreign Affairs

Drongonia wrote:

(Image)

Drongonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Official Communication

To the Most Honourable Rangatira,

I, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, am very pleased and thoroughly honoured to have the opportunity to ask you some questions.

My first question is asked personally on behalf of the Prime Minister, who was unfortunately unable to join me for the drafting of these questions due to a prior engagement with a voting machine company. The question being, what is your view on Drongonia as a whole? Do you find the nation favourable? He asks this acknowledging that our two nations are near polar opposites of each other, with Tangatarehua having a strong ethnocentricism for its native Maori people, while we share much the same attitude, but in regards to our majority European population.

The second question is regarding liberalism in Tangatarehua and is one I've been wanting to ask you myself. Would you consider Tangatarehua a traditional 'liberal democracy' in the Western sense? As an outsider, this is likely not the case, but I'd like to get an insight from you about not only the current state of the nation's politics and social standpoint, but where they might go in the future. I suppose as an addendum to that question, do you see Tangatarehua skewing more leftwards or rightwards in the future?

I hope we haven't asked too much of you, and I thank you in advance for your time.

Warmest regards,
Hon. Katy Pace
MP for Halver,
Minister for Foreign Affairs

This communication is considered an 'secure communication' for the purposes of the Information Security Act 2003. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication, please destroy any copies of it you or your organisation hold immediately.

Honourable Katy Pace,

I am most grateful to receive this communication from you and shall take great pleasure in providing answers to your queries, which I hope you will find most satisfactory.

Drongonia is a nation that holds much significance to the imperial government and indeed the people of Tangatarehua. You may be interested to know that in Te Reo, we refer to your nation exonymically as 'Te Whenua Waipounamu' which could perhaps be translated directly as 'The Republic of Te Waipounamu' or even as 'The South Island Republic'.

This is because, as you may be aware, your land was known to our people for many hundreds of years before Europeans arrived and Te Waipounamu is our traditional name for the land you call home.

However we of course recognise and respect the republican government that has since formed by the Europeans, which is why we take care to call it Te Whenua Waipounamu. I wish to stress that you should consider it a great honour that your nation has an exonym in our language, as few other nations do - most are merely poor quality transliterations of their native or English name.

On a related note, it would be factually incorrect of me were I not to mention that in some quarters of Tangatarehua - I emphasise that this is not the government, but merely society that I speak of - there is a very small and residual amount of suspicion of Drongonia because the land was once Maori and was so thoroughly conquered and subjugated by your ancestors.

I wish to make clear that this is not a government position - we recognise wholeheartedly the legitimacy of the Republic of Drongonia, the right of its people to live on the island of Te Waipounamu and such a status ought never be reversed.

We also, perhaps controversially, believe in the right of conquest - just as Tangtatarehua's lower islands of Rangiwhero and Motumakiriri were conquered by the Maori, who drove out the Japanese natives, so too did the Europeans rightfully conquer the land that is now your home. It would be highly hypocritical of the imperial government to criticise your nation when we too have expanded our land via conquest.

Moving ahead to the 21st century, I wish to convey that Tangatarehua considers Drongonia to be among its closest and most important international friends and partners. Our trading relationship is extremely strong and beneficial to both countries, while tourism and cross-cultural exchanges are common. Drongonia is indeed so important to Tantatarehua that even Her Sacred Majesty the Empress took it upon herself to name your nation as one of our closest partners in her annual address to the nation. It is my sincere hope that our friendship, diplomatic and economic relationship can continue to blossom and deepen.

Your question regarding the status of liberalism may well be a difficult one to answer, for 'liberalism' seems to have so many definitions depending on whom you ask and the political context of the nation in which you ask it.

In Tangatarehua, 'liberalism' is usually defined as classical liberalism (in contrast to the American liberalism which is rather more akin to social democracy). It is an ideology that is espoused by many political parties, but chiefly it is espoused by Tikanga Herekore Manapori [the Free Democratic Party] and its predecessor, Ropu Ripera [the Liberal Party].

THM are by far Tangatarehua's most historically successful political party and currently command a majority in Te Whare o Mangai [the House of Representatives]. They governed continuously between 1982 and 2000, again between 2009 and 2015 and returned to power once again in 2021. As 1982 was Tangatarehua's first democratic election, it can be said that the party who espouse the ideology of liberalism have governed for well over half of the four decades in which we have held free and fair democratic elections.

I think it would be fair to say that at this point in time Tangatarehua aspires toward liberal democracy but cannot yet be said to have fully embraced the concept and the reasons for this are myriad.

Part of this, as you have insinuated, is cultural - we are not a western culture and so some western concepts that underpin liberal democracy such as egalitarianism (the belief that all people are equal) do not exist here. Although we have made great strides toward equality, Tangatarehua remains a hierarchal society dominated by a caste system and many aspects of feudalism remain intact.

Another factor is that there remains a considerable scepticism toward democracy in Tangatarehua as well as, in some quarters, a sense that it has been foisted upon us as a penalty for losing a war rather than something which has been allowed to develop organically. There are also, when we look at the state of many western nations today, fears around populism and fears that if governments were too acutely influenced by the capricious passions of the masses then we may fall into some of the pitfalls that today see a lot of western countries from our perspective to be on the verge of collapse.

And so currently we have a hybrid system that balances many aspects of democracy and allows the country to develop further in that direction but also acknowledges our culture, places the aristocracy in an executive position and ensures that the executive branch remains as technocratic as possible.

I think that our democracy could perhaps be compared to that of Great Britain in the mid 19th century - a democracy was undoubtedly emerging, but was still viewed sceptically as a rather radical concept.

I cannot say whether Tangatarehua skews leftward or rightward as this does depend on which party controls the lower house - in many ways we remain tethered to the political centre. However from an outside perspective Tangatarehua could be seen to skew very slightly to the right, due to the prevalence of what westerners would perceive as social conservatism here as well as our general alignment with capitalist nations and our history of opposition to communism.

I sincerely hope that this answers all of your questions but if you require further elucidation I would be more than honoured to assist. I look to further bilateral meetings with yourself and with your Prime Minister in future and wish you and your people great peace and prosperity.

Nga mihi,
Te Rata Te Rongomau
Most Honourable Rangatira of the Empire of Tangatarehua