NS Nation Name: Alouite
Political Party Name: The National Liberal Party (Nationalliberale Partei)
Political Party main color: Light Blue
Political party Logo: Political Party Political Compass results: Political Party Founder: Herman Dietrich, Erika Voß and Conrad Sternberg
Political Party Leader: Johann Wägner
Political Party History: The National Liberal Party, founded in 2014 by former CSP members Heinrich Dietrich, Erika Voß and a disgruntled former member of the Greens, Conrad Sternberg. The National Liberal Party was one of two splinter parties that resulted from the scandal associated with the CSP and merged with it's counterpart the Euro-skeptic and Nationalist Kundgebung von Patrioten (KvP). Their merger was drawn out and involved several positions from both parties being set aside, but in the end the parties agreed on the need for more power to be granted to the citizenry, for a moderately regulated but otherwise free market economy, for a skeptical position on the European Union and for a greater emphasis on civics in the nation. In 2016 the party exploded in popularity as reports of migrant crime were in the news throughout Germany and the NLP's nuanced approach to the migrant crisis has been well received in the country. Furthermore, in 2017, with the election of a new party leader Johann Wägner who was a popular Mayor of Überlingen and formerly an officer in the Landwehr the party has continued to gain popular support. During the year of 2017 and leading into 2018 the party held several rallies celebrating Lowenmark's history of independence as a free state and hosting conferences in which they raise concerns regarding the current trajectory of the European Union.
Political Party Values and Goals: The party is socially conservative on several political positions such as abortion and issues surrounding transgender identity and is also known for supporting limits to immigration to allow for proper resources to be allocated to the integration of new citizens in Lowenmark. The party has rapidly grown in its Euro-skepticism and sees the poverty in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal as being emblematic of the organization's failures to allow people to elect members of European Parliament and the concentration of power in the hands of France and Germany. With regards to business, the party believes that with the exception of breaking up oligopolies and multinational corporations which clog up the market and prevent small businesses and native corporations from functioning, regulations should be simple and mostly focused with sanitation and environmental conservation. The latter of the two, environmental conservation, is mostly rooted in the sense of national pride that they derive from the beauty and cleanliness of the country in comparison to others. The party believes in the importance of the consent of the governed, and firmly believes that if 15% of registered voters in the nation sign a petition for a referendum, that that should become a government priority. Finally, the party believes in a need for the country to overhaul its welfare system and re-configure it based on the Swiss model.
Other info about your party: The party is officially secular though it associates with Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and moderate Muslim community leaders in the country which it sees as being an important part of a working community. The party is known for its association with the Swiss FDP, the Austrian FPO, and the Italian M5S.
Nation Name:Character Name: Johann Wägner
Character Age: 45
Character Gender: Male
Character Appearance: Character Party: National Liberal Party
Character Strengths: Charismatic, Intellectual, Powerful Speaker.
Character Weaknesses : Disliked and actively opposed by the Establishment, a bit of a Loose Canon sometimes, struggles to get votes from a significant number of the elderly, particularly those 65 and older who tend to consider him 'brash' due to his rants about the European Union and Immigration crisis.
Character Short Bio: Born in Salem, Lowenmark to Wilhelm A. Wägner, a Retired Captain in the Landwehr, and Corina Wägner, Johann was raised in the small city where he embraced his ancestry and succeeded with ease in the local school. At age 18, he joined the Landwehr and served faithfully rising to the rank of Lance Corporal, after his initial three year contract expired, he re-enlisted on a five year contract which he served with distinction eventually being promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major before retiring. With years of military service behind him, he went to college and studied Economics and Business Management, when he graduated in 1998 he he moved to Überlingen and began looking for jobs. However, after only four years working as a banker for Deutsche Bank he found himself disinterested in his career and he settled for joining the local police department in 2002 where he was given an early promotion to Sergeant after six months of service due to his prior military service. During his time in the police force he met a young woman working at the precinct named Christina Ross, and fell in love. Together they would get married years later and had their first child, Lukas in 2006. In 2007 he retired from the police force and aged 34 he decided to run for mayor. He campaigned with the support of the police and used his military background and educational experiences to justify his capabilities and was allowed to run as a representative for the NCU party. He learned that he was a good public speaker during his run for office and pledged that he would not sell out to corporate interests unlike several of his opponents. The result was him getting elected by a 4% margin, defeating the incumbent CSP mayor Karl Bauer, and with this upset his political career began.
Mayor of Überlingen
(2007-2015)
Johann knew that he was going to have to deal with rising poverty resulting from the global recession which had begun towards the end of his campaign for office, and deep down he knew that the wrong move could sink his career. However, he remained steadfast pushed for community outreach and put massive funding into a city renovations project. The project would invest money into restoring the city center and roadways outlying it. The current police chief in power was respected by most Überlingen Citizens, so, he decided there would be no Deputy Mayor, and that instead, when needed, the Police Chief would step in to assist in any affairs not managed by the mayor. During the renovations project hundreds of homes that had been abandoned by the poor in the city were torn down across the city and he used the reconstruction project to create jobs, called the Civil Restoration Corps. The jobs created renovating the city and removing abandoned houses helped boost the economy as well as businesses and tourism saw a boost. Later in 2011, he began the Business Restoration Project, and began promoting local shops and businesses, cutting taxes on local businesses as well as putting jobs programs in place after getting a sponsorship from more successful businesses in the city. The jobs program connected struggling businesses in the community to unemployed workers who could not find work. In 2011 he was re-elected, now with a majority of the vote gaining 53% of the vote. To celebrate the city's recovery from the recession, in 2012 the Überlingen Riverwalk and Downtown Überlingen were given a complete overhaul with any abandoned buildings towards the outskirts of the city being auctioned off to startup businesses or converted into something useful. In 2013 he furthered community outreach by having the police and the CRC work together to clean up and fix broken down neighborhoods removing litter, fixing pavement, and repairing damaged educational and public buildings in a project which was sponsored by businesses in the city in exchange for the funding to count towards charitable donations by those businesses. Later that year, the Anti-Corruption campaign was launched, later than would've been desired, but still in good time, by the end of the year over 50 notable businessmen, policemen, and even a city council member along with members of small gangs that had formed during the peak of unemployment were arrested in Operation Cleanup which aimed to root out much of the corruption in the city. While far from perfect, Mayor Wägner had kept the city from falling apart as many other small European cities had, had cleaned up the River area and renovated the city, brought down crime significantly, and used his limited but now substantial knowledge of business and economics to help grow the economy. However, there are significant number of people who say he was not nearly enough of an interventionist in his approach to fixing problems in the city and only made it look aesthetically better while leaving the actual problems in place. His achievements made him genuinely happy, however, they also made him crave a greater project, so he ran for Member of Parliament representing Überlingen against incumbent and already disliked Klaus Schauer in 2014 endorsing his police chief in the mayoral elections.
Member of Parliament
(2014-)
Winning the election with an 8% margin over his closest competitor Klaus Schauer, Johann ran a positive campaign for the most part, speaking about his military service, time in the police force, and progress while Mayor of Überlingen. He said in a conclusion to one of his political speeches in Überlingen, "What I have done in Überlingen I will work towards for all of Lowenmark. I will never forget my time as mayor of our city, and as your member of Parliament I will never let them fall behind in their current line of progress. However, for me, it is time to aspire to something higher. I truly believe that I could contribute greatly to this beautiful nation, but in the end, that isn't even what this is about. It is about us as citizens of Lowenmark and what we can do when we stand together for greatness, and against corruption, and those who would seek to divide us. Together, we will accomplish many great things." and from that day on he was labelled a firebrand in his own political ideology. He had defeated the establishment in his party, and after a rocky start against Schauer who started out with a 32% of the vote to Johann's 30% managed to grow a grassroots movement and fund his political campaign 75% on individual contributions, with the rest, coming from businesses in Überlingen. Many the same companies that he had worked with during the Überlingen Renovations project, so he took some relief in knowing that in the past it hadn't effected his ability to run his office without corporate interests. Soon the election came and the results were relieving, 35% to 29% with Schauer being defeated handily after a widely watched debate between the two in which Johann roasted the politician for his inactivity in Parliament and laziness.
With the elections over, Johann began working towards crafting legislation that would provide tax breaks for small businesses across Lowenmark owned by citizens and give them a competitive edge over businesses that were run by businesses from out of the country. The legislation managed to get support from the newly formed NLP and a minority of the CSP, but his own CSU was not interested in backing his legislation and it ultimately failed to be passed. This led to Johann attending several NLP conferences and eventually changing parties. However, Johann rose to national and even international prominence after the 2016 Panama Papers scandal tore through Lowenmark humiliating the incumbent Chancellor. Johann became a major voice of the opposition and he called for the resignation of the Chancellor becoming a major part of the political push against the CSP. He made a speech on state television in which he famously stated of the CSP leadership that "These elected representatives, who were almost exclusively elected in areas with low voter turnout, have acted like entitled grown up children who are angry because their refusal to think freely of their corporate donors compels them to fight against the welfare of Lowenmark's people. This is not a Gottschalk problem either, it's the entirety of the CSP who make off with money storing it away in tax havens while they proclaim a moral high ground on other matters, these people are incapable of cleaning their hands of corruption because they are the corruption. I have gotten a lot of support from dissenting members of the CSP in some of my anti-corruption proposals, and I would even endorse in their campaigns if they requested it, though I have heard word about splintering and would encourage them to break away from these corrupt and bloated egotists who run the CSP as soon as possible. This is a problem of corrupt officials trying to bar real progress and a working system from being put in place." at a rally in Konstanz. A senior member of the CSP reacted by calling Johann 'a raving lunatic mad with his pursuit of power'. However, he rebutted these claims in a second speech, this time in his birthplace of Salem where he said "These people now dare call me a lunatic mad with power. But what is lunacy is blocking a proposal to place restrictions in place that will prevent the government from repeating these obvious crimes against the country. For that is either lunacy or deep, deep corruption. And mark my word, if it is the latter it will be uprooted." In 2016 news of elections came and Johann spent much of his time campaigning with both NCU and members of the new NLP and the KvP splinter party in an attempt to build a coalition in the coming election. This led to him increasingly coming to find the KvP agreeable and in late 2016 after the horrors of the the migrant crisis became apparent he spearheaded the merger between the NLP and KvP in which the KvP became a wing within the NLP. His popularity and relative experience was much appreciated by the young party and in the 2017 leadership election, Johann was made the new party leader. Since his election his views have evolved further with him coming to vocally oppose far left elements in the country, holding increasingly Euro-skeptic rallies and promoting his own brand of a fusion of National Liberalism and Classical Liberalism.
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