"What's up with your big belly, Miss Prime Minister?"
Nord-Brutlandese vocabulary words:
*pusono = a more specific term referring to the abdomen below the umbilicus/bellybutton. Word used for the enlarging abdomen of pregnant women. Usually translated in English as belly.
*sporga = more accurately translated as protuberant.
OOC: Though this will be open, I'd like people to contact me first before posting.
OOC2: First RP I'd be doing here, carried over from JF. Since I only made it past the OP in JF, it's like starting here anew!
OOC3: More info - Brutland and Norden is a conservative country, and so a Prime Minister accused of being pregnant without a husband is a big scandal.
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Day 1, Wednesday
10:00 AM
The press room of the Government Palace was again teeming with journalists and their camera-and-lightbulb-and-microphone-toting assistants. It was Wednesday - and Wednesday is the day when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Brutland and Norden holds her weekly press conferences. It was some kind of tradition now for the Prime Minister and the Government Palace Press Corps, ever since Prime Minister Marianna Cortanella rose to power. Cortanella wanted the government to be open, and so she instituted weekly press conferences to update the journalists and Brutland and Norden to whatever was happening in the government.
The press conference, in all its noisiness, resembled more like a happy fun social gathering rather than a hunting session of a pack of wolves hungry to get a piece of the juicy information.
Perhaps it's because journalists in Brutland and Norden aren't like their foreign counterparts. They are civil, less obtrusive, more tactful. Even though the media in the country is free, native journalists tend to maintain a certain degree of unique professionalism, proper decorum, and respect towards anyone they interview. That is even if they hold wildly differing opinions and even if their bosses are extremely critical of the individual in question. Indeed, just by the way they interact, anyone can spot the foreign journalists from the natives in the crowd.
The buzz became louder as Prime Minister Marianna Cortanella entered the room. As if scripted, the journalists opened their notepads, bright lights focused on the podium, and the cameras rolled. Slowly, the Prime Minister walked towards the podium, saying hello to La Brutelliense's Carmela Brutarigo and welcomed back TRNM's Ernestina Giovanetti. Cortanella asked about Giovanetti's newborn child, the reason why the reporter was absent at the Government Palace Press Corps for the past three months. Cortanella smiled as she listened to Giovanetti's brief summary of her experience with childbirth. "You will give me tips, ok?" Cortanella said, and then added, "If I'll have children, that is."
After a few moments Cortanella stepped on the podium, with some uncharacteristic difficulty. She had managed to avoid any podium gaffes so far, unlike her predecessors. Rinnero Faro was hit by the falling Nord-Brutlandese coat-of-arms that was poorly attached on the wall right above the podium, while Borio Drasella fell down face flat after tripping on the podium step as he ran to give a hasty press conference.
The din of the crowd died down as Cortanella tapped on the microphone. The Prime Minister made a few announcements, and then opened the floor for questions. La Brutelliense's Brutarigo asked whether the federal government had made a decision towards funding the Crona River Dam Project in Brutland, Cortanella said that the Cabinet decided to seek the advise of the General Court. Giorgio Bambini of the left-leaning La Díernalo, a newspaper critical of Cortanella, asked whether the Kingdom is still serious in its membership in the Confederacy. Cortanella answered "No comment," and coupled it with her 'do-not-push-the-issue' look. Bambini and a few others chuckled. "No comment" was the neutral answer to any question that had to be dodged. Prime Ministers from time immemorial all used it, and Cortanella was no different. Its seemed that that phrase as invented for dodging questions.
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Carina Olivetti of the tabloid Extra! was sitting at the back, half-interested in taking notes. As a tabloid journalist, she isn't that much interested in dams or budgets or international alliances. She's interested for news items that are juicy. Tabloids in Brutland and Norden, unlike their respectable broadsheet counterparts, spew out sensationalist exaggerations, wild claims, and rabid exposés that targets anyone, from the King of Brutland and Norden to the few lowly hobos of Kingsville. Despite those, it is difficult to prosecute journalists in the Kingdom due to its liberal media and speech laws, held sacrosanct by the people and the courts. Still, those in the respectable journalism section dare not to abuse the protection of the law. The tabloid and many of the magazine writers, on the other hand, flaunt it. In a sense, they are more akin to the foreign journalists, hungry for the first scoop, the juicy exclusives, and the prestigious prizes.
Olivetti was your typical tabloid journalist. She had been observing and researching about Cortanella since the 2008 elections, and was confident that she knew everything about the Prime Minister of Brutland and Norden. Cortanella had been somewhat odd lately, an observation she kept secret from everyone else, lest they outscoop her. There had to be some explanation for the somewhat reduced energy level of the typically flamboyant and radiant Prime Minister. There had to be some explanation for her gradually closing her private life to snoopers, paparazzis, and tabloid journalists like her. And there had to be some explanation for that seemingly enlarging belly. And by treats or by threats, she would uncover that explanation. Or perhaps she would just make her own.
Olivetti had blared out speculations about Cortanella before and this won't be different. She won't say it directly, she will hint at it so the others will just direct attention to it. And Carina Olivetti will be famous as being the first to raise the alarm and provide the explanation.
She raised her hand after the Prime Minister answered a question from L'Unnone about some Kingsville project. Cortanella immediately spotted her and pointed at her. In that fleeting moment, exhilaration and anticipation built up inside Olivetti. You won't suspect what I'll say, she thought.
Olivetti stood up and leaned forward. She said tauntingly in Nord-Brutlandese, "What's up with your big belly, Miss Prime Minister?"
