The Republic
Cacertian election results in grand coalition
Beatrice Turati in Vichenza
Monday 20 June 2016 16.19 GST
Cacerta's general election has produced its first peacetime grand coalition, a government containing both its traditionally dominant Unitary and Ultranationalist parties and the newly-established Union Party, with Valeriana Khushrenada as its new Prime Minister.
The result may seem surprising, especially since at first glance the Unitary Party and their coalition partners the Labour Party still commanded enough seats between them for a comfortable majority in the Common Assembly. However, this is the third election in a row where one party did not gain a majority by itself. While it may be premature to call it the culmination of political changes, the fact that a political landscape previously characterised by single-party governments has been reshaped is now beyond question.
While the outgoing Prime Minister, Henrietta Ianelli, may have had the means to continue in office, there were factors that weighed against the matter, which they hinted at on the campaign trail. The powers reserved for the monarchy in Cacerta's parliamentary system mean that its Prime Ministers do not have the luxury of going on and on in office, such as ours could for eighteen years. Cacerta's longest serving Prime Minister, Asella Cottone, served for 11 years, and only won three elections because the second was called a year after the first on account of Queen Rosalia's death.
The strongly ingrained, if unofficial, two-term limit has had the benefit of ensuring flexibility and new ideas - even when a party dominated politics such as the UniPats for 29 years after the Second Helarian War, they did not succumb to the complacency and tiredness that ultimately felled other parties too long in power. If Henrietta Ianelli had attempted to continue into a third term, they would have been up against a commonly-accepted limit, and likely would not have had a strong argument in their favour, such as that their leadership was needed in a time of national emergency.
Further working against their chances of remaining in office was the Labour Party's own position on the matter. As the first coalition government that Cacerta has had since arguably Madalena Vannuci's ministry after the Unification Wars, the Uni-Lab coalition has been remarkably successful and productive. It has ensured good government in the kingdom and been a valuable partner for Queen Anelyn on matters of foreign policy. For a country long used to the idea of single-party government, that is no small feat; if nothing else, the Uni-Lab coalition deserves the credit for acclimating Cacertian voters to coalition governments and proving they can work outside times of war.
However, it cannot be denied that the arrangement has at times proven hard to swallow for Labour. Labour had thrived to an extent in opposition and local government, capitalising on community politics and quality of life issues in the latter, and in the former staking a position to the left of the UniPats and against the nationalistic preoccupations of the UltraNats. If Labour's class-based rhetoric has often cut no ice with a Cacertian electorate where the left-right political spectrum does not apply, it has nevertheless been a useful watchdog and irritant for the governments of the day, a quality that made them the Official Opposition in the 1980s when voters perceived the UltraNats as too fixated on foreign policy. To make the leap from that to being part of national government has been no easy task. The compromises involved in governance have irritated the rank-and-file, but that was not the main issue, considering Labour's governing experience at a local level.
Cacerta's strongly leftist mainstream often can bring differences between parties to the level of narcissism of small differences. Even as the Henrietta Ianelli ministry proved itself a quietly reliable success, what foreboded in the Labour ranks was the possibility that the Prime Minister's party would get most of the credit and they would be boxed in as the junior partners. Their worries weren't far-fetched. Many factors combined to humble Akashi's once-dominant National Union, but it was their entrance into coalition with the Socialists in the 1970s that shifted voters' perception of them from a leading party to minor partners. The UniPats and Labour have been able to work well because they have enough common ground politically, but that has also set up Labour's leader with a difficult dilemma that befalls any smaller party in a coalition: argue too much to remind voters of their differences and voters would see them as obstructionists, work quietly with the UniPats and voters might well start to see them as an appendage of the UniPats instead of a party in their own right.
That Labour only lost 7 seats in comparison to 2011 is a testament to their ability to maintain their core support, but it is small comfort to the party leadership: without the Union Party's meteoric rise, they could easily have not caught such a lucky break. Now becoming once again the Official Opposition, the Labour Party finds itself on familiar ground. They will be able to hold to account the grand coalition, and the lopsided majority it enjoys will undoubtedly bolster the impact of Labour's underdog rhetoric. Paradoxically, by retreating into opposition largely intact, Labour may well have assured itself the opportunity to return to government in the future.
The tougher situation to navigate is the Union Party's. Broken off from the UltraNats after the failed 2013 coup against Queen Anelyn, it was reasonable to expect that the UNNP would attract significant support, and likely even inflict a humiliation upon the UltraNats, who would surely be punished by voters at the ballot box for allowing itself to become so extremist that it would try to overthrow the government. What blunted the UNNP's rise was the astonishing good job Iralia Marik and Valeriana Khushrenada have done of detoxifying the party's image and clearing its ranks of extremists. Even so, the UNNP took the distinction of being the third-largest party from Labour and even won seats in the House Assembly, a chamber long known for its ability to lock out parties outside the UniPats and UltraNats.
One cannot sneer at Azzura Padova's understandable decision to accept the opportunity to take the Union Party into government right after its first election. Few parties ever manage such a steep rise. However, in government, they will find themselves in the same difficulty as Labour, amplified by the fact that they will share cabinet posts with the party they broke off from in the first place. If Iralia Marik and Valeriana Khushrenada succeed in erasing the stain of the 2013 coup and firmly placing the UltraNats on a solidly moderate path, Azzura Padova will need to work on developing an identity for the Union Party outside of being "UltraNats minus the extremism". The opportunity is there for their party to chart a middle course and become a centrist party, of the kind that arguably hasn't had a significant role in Cacertian politics since its political system solidified around the two dominant parties. Their challenge will be to take it without falling victim to that famously acerbic quip, "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
As the first UltraNat Prime Minister since Vincencio Cristostomo, Valeriana Khushrenada has begun her term in office with the right symbolic gestures. They has spoken about the importance of Cacerta doing its part to help other nations and talked about the 'global responsibilities' that come with its status as a global world power. They has retained Henrietta Ianelli as Deputy Prime Minister and announced no drastic changes internally except with the consent of both the UniPats and UNNP. All moves that will reassure foreign observers who associated the UltraNats with Vincencio Cristostomo's isolationist, uncooperative stance or Giovanni Damien's failed putsch.
Now, they must master making a tri-party coalition function smoothly.
