Parliamentary Elections Called

[Novar Ohan]

Prime Minister Svetlana Bencenoff has dissolved the parliament and called for a special election on the 30th following the departure of ACTION! from the governing Social Democrat-led People's Alliance and the failure of her attempts to bring into government the Liberal Party. His Majesty, the Emperor Sebastien, reportedly accepted the Prime Minister's request at 9:30 this morning, despite repeated calls from the Palace for continued stability in these troubled times. The House of Peers voted in a 50-35 vote, with 5 abstaining, to adjourn until the House of Burghers has been reseated...

His Majesty's Most Loyal Leader of the Opposition, Etrik Carlov, Leader of the Christian Democrats in the National Front, charged last night that Svetlana's government had failed in its stated aim of establishing prosperity for the rural population and restated his promises that under a Christian Democrat-led coalition the government would work hand-in-hand with the church and rural landowners to restore the tattered social fabric through establishment of more church schools and the encouragement of more lords to take a paternal attitude towards their family's former tenants.

ACTION! left the PA over the Prime Minister's refusal to appoint party leader and convicted felon Orlov Turiminik to the cabinet as Minister for Social Justice, or to endorse ACTION!'s plan for radical redistribution of church and noble land to the rural and urban poor. When asked for comment, Orlov claimed that his party's internal polling indicated that they stood to take possession of a number of seats from both main parties and saw no reason to hold onto a coalition with a traitor such as Svetlana.

At its height in the 68 election under Emperor Daniel, ACTION! commanded enough seats to attempt form a minority government, but the Emperor refused to accept then leader Albert Entien as Prime Minister and forced a grand coalition between the Christian and Social Democrats that lasted until 1969, where ACTION's vote fell and the Christian Democrats under James Veril embarked on a decade long dominance of the government. Emperor Sebastien has refused to indicate if he would accept Orlov Turiminik as Prime Minister.

Martin Itrine, of the Liberal Party, has announced his plans to challenge the Christian and Social Democrats both in their main strongholds and restore the Liberal Party to the position of kingmaker it held throughout the 1990s. Claiming that the Christian Democrats stick too closely to an idealized past and have yet to come to terms with modern affairs, and the Social Democrats have failed to modernize the country's infrastructure in a sustainable fashion, Martin today announced that under a Liberal Democrat-led coalition government an 'indissoluble wall will be built between church and state' and further economic liberalization will be pursued. He has announced his willingness to work with both parties provided they promise to reduce the scope of government interference in private enterprise and personal life.

Martin Itrine has been prominent before when his wife was seen wearing jeans at the ceremony where he was sworn in, the Patriarch saying that she was dressed scandalously and refusing to continue until she left. Patriarch Dmitri XII, as per church custom, has not endorsed a party, but sources close to the church claim he supports the May 30th Movement, a recently founded political organisation which seeks to return the structure of government to before the establishment of the modern constitution on May 31st, 1947. The May 30th Movement is contesting seats primarily in the Oriental Ruthenian heartland of Roslin and the Stronghold, where the banned National Party for a Free and Catholic Oriental Ruthenia, known as the "Nazi Party of Novar Ohan", had its strongest support under the reign of Tsar Damien.

Current opinion polls suggest that the next election will lead to a National Front government with a slight, though workable, plurality of 40% of Parliament's seats for the Christian Democrats and the remaining members of the coalition sharing between them 14% of the seats.

[Terignad]

to be frank I barely read the above, but am intersted and would like to know what parliament these elections are for , who can run and who can vote.

[Novar Ohan]

OOC: This is a purely IC election. To run you need to get 15,000 people to sign on to get your name on the ballot. If you want to run a political slate, you need to get up to about 40,000 people to support your party and to pay 5000 roubles to the Electoral Office. To vote, you just need to be resident in Novar Ohan.

[Novar Ohan]

Social Democrats

The positives for the Social Democrats are that, to a large extent, SD policies have worked. Literacy is increasing to the point where in urban areas it is on a par with many western countries, the national healthcare system has done what it set out to do, and the economy is slowly spreading more wealth into the general mass of the population through social programs and spending.

That said, there is a very good chance that the Popular Front will lose government in this coming election. They've lost their rural supporters through a hastily, and regrettably made, promise to redistribute private land that the supreme court ruled unconstitutional, while a bill to change the law was rejected by the House of Nobles. Prime Minister Svetlana's also antagonized unnecessarily the aristocracy through her occasionally revolutionary sentiments, and while they are no longer as powerful as they once were, they still hold a great deal of influence. In addition, the Liberal Democrats have split off the professional classes.

Christian Democrats

The CD is widely believed to win the upcoming election, but demographics indicate that even if it does its days are numbered. Over the past ten years, the rural population has shrunk while the urban population has grown, and the Christian Democrat charter of traditional values no longer holds as much appeal as it once did, while the urban bourgeois have for the most part been drifting to the Liberal Democrats.

Even in the rural countryside, Etrik is in considerable trouble. The Churches have splintered and no longer have as much control over rank and file clergy as they once did. Even if the countryside's priests and nobility combined to support the Christian Democrats, the rural vote might still not go for the National Front as it once did.