Social Democrats KF

Social Democracy KF (Soksyalthéruarita KR) is a political party in the Kiravian Federacy.

History
SDKF was founded by Soran Akēvarin, the sole Kirosocialist delegate to the Federal Stanora who voted against dissolution of the Kiravian Federal Republic and the formation of the Kiravian Union as a single-party state. Akēvarin was expelled from the Party and forced to flee to Federalist-controlled territory, first Suderavia and then to Æonara, where he was seated in the Rump Stanora. With electoral politics suspended under Martial Law, Akēvarin’s SDKF originally functioned more as a mutual aid society to provide support for other dissident socialist refugees. Its trade union wing was the Kiravian Workers’ Democratic Committee.

[With the transition from Remnant 1.0 - Martial Law to Remnant 2.0 - Party-State] SDKF was included in the National Reunification Front, allowing it to retain its legal status. SDKF was useful to PE Séan Kæśek’s government in several ways: Its inclusion in the NRF helped project a “broad front” image of the regime for propaganda purposes. Moreover, it helped maintain stability by acting as a controlled outlet for left-wing political sentiment and facilitated the monitoring of left-wing activists and emigrés by the domestic intelligence services.

During the early post-Kirosocialist period, SDKF played an important role in the NRM electoral strategy by attracting left-leaning voters sour on the Left Front (successors to the Kirosocialist Party) into the NRM camp. It enjoyed considerable success at the polls in these early elections and gained representation in most provinces. However, it gradually lost credibility with its voter base on the Mainland due to its general support for the economic liberalisation agenda. It had a poor showing in the [YEAR] federal election and its electoral footprint continued to contract thereafter.

In contrast, the SDKF enjoyed a surge in support on Æonara during the island's post-reunification economic downturn, winning control of several important city governments and forming governing coalitions at the state level in Central Æonara and West Æonara with the Christian Democrats. SDKF members still remember winning the mayoralty of Sirana, the city where the party was founded, as an iconic moment in their history from this period.

The dissolution of the NRM and enactment of the Anti-Party Law brought challenges for the party. The new restrictions on interstate campaign finance forced most of its mainland provincial chapters out of contention within a cycle. The small remaining SDKF caucus in the Stanora found itself unwelcome in the newly-formed parliamentary groups: The Old Kirsok wing would not tolerate its inclusion in the PDF, even as it fostered its own fledgling social-democratic wing. The SDKF and CSU had a great deal of common ground on most fiscal and economic policies, but talks to form a joint caucus foundered quickly over moral issues and religious identity.

Today, the SDKF is most important in the provincial politics of Æonara and the Overseas Regions. In most of these provinces, the SDKF is the main (if not only) secular left-of-centre party; other consequential left-of-centre forces mainly belong to the Social Christian or Islamic socialist traditions. Its contemporary presence in Great Kirav is more limited, due to strong competition from the PDF and KLP. On the Mainland the SDKF is strongest in Fariva, the Kaviska, and urban constituencies in Farravonia.

Some believe that the SDKF is propped up by conservative forces to obstruct the evolution of the PDF in a more electable social-democratic direction.

Platform
As its name suggests, SDKF is fundamentally a social-democratic party. Its manifesto claims both the “Akēvarinite tradition of Kiravian socialist and democratic thought” and “international social democracy” as bases for its programme. Key priorities include expansion and improvement of public services and social protection, support for and ,

Housing is a core issue for the party: SDKF works to grow the nation’s public housing stock and improve conditions in existing projects, with more federal funding and oversight for provincial and local housing authorities. It opposes the prevailing housing agenda of the right-leaning parties, which has been to phase out the large-scale government-owned projects that still house a large share of the urban population in Great Kirav and Sydona. In the Overseas Regions, its aggressive support for expanding rural public housing initiatives has helped to increase its very low vote share in agrarian areas.

The SDKF has a hawkish foreign policy stance, and is supportive of military alliances, collective security, and humanitarian interventions. It is Atrassicist and supports the Kiravian military presence and development efforts in Crona. Whereas most labour-oriented parties on the Kiravian Mainland are Cisatrassicist, SDKF is resolutely not, in part because the logistics, construction, and service jobs created in the wake of the Deluge have been enormously beneficial to the SDKF base in the Overseas Regions.

From an international perspective, SDKF is far and away the most socially progressive political formation represented at the federal level in Kiravia. Some provincial chapters (e.g. SDKF Niyaska) are more vocally progressive, while others (e.g. SDKF Varisavia) hold more socially conservative positions.

The SDKF supports greater social inclusion for sexual minorities, and has worked to enact and strengthen nondiscrimination laws with regard to sexual orientation. The Farivan and Niyaskan state chapters support legal equivalency between marriages and same-sex civil unions. The SDKF also supports coverage of contraceptives by public healthcare funding programmes, and reform of provincial marriage law to permit no-fault "constructive divorce" after an extended period of separation.

SDKF supports abolition of the death penalty for peacetime domestic crimes and has backed several successful provincial abolitions and moratoria. It supports decriminalisation of drug use and decoupling substance rehabilitation from the criminal justice system, but also stronger enforcement against the drug trade, which is seen as especially detrimental to quality of life on public housing estates.