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National Reconstruction Front (Daxia): Difference between revisions
National Reconstruction Front (Daxia) (view source)
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This unauspicious beginning to Yang Qiu's first term was only the first sign of the times to come for the party. Pressured by party stalwarts on the Politburo, Yang Qiu began to dial back on the 'montage of democracy', as the presence of opposition parties in the electoral system was called in internal discussions and documents. As the [[Communist Party of Daxia|CPD]] had been banned back in the presidency of [[Qiu Heng]], the government went after the moderate socialists of the All-Daxia Socialist Party and the moribund Liberal Party. In typical fashion for a man whose career was spent in the tax offices, Qiu ordered a series of stringent audits of the finances of opposition parties, freezing their bank accounts while the audits were conducted. The audits lasted well over two years and by then the opposition parties had been starved of all financial resources and many of its cadres were arrested on bogus charges of tax fraud. Still Yang Qiu did not yet take the ultimate step of banning them, resisting calls to officialy turn the country into a one party state for fear of his public standing crashing and of people openly protesting on the streets of the capital. | This unauspicious beginning to Yang Qiu's first term was only the first sign of the times to come for the party. Pressured by party stalwarts on the Politburo, Yang Qiu began to dial back on the 'montage of democracy', as the presence of opposition parties in the electoral system was called in internal discussions and documents. As the [[Communist Party of Daxia|CPD]] had been banned back in the presidency of [[Qiu Heng]], the government went after the moderate socialists of the All-Daxia Socialist Party and the moribund Liberal Party. In typical fashion for a man whose career was spent in the tax offices, Qiu ordered a series of stringent audits of the finances of opposition parties, freezing their bank accounts while the audits were conducted. The audits lasted well over two years and by then the opposition parties had been starved of all financial resources and many of its cadres were arrested on bogus charges of tax fraud. Still Yang Qiu did not yet take the ultimate step of banning them, resisting calls to officialy turn the country into a one party state for fear of his public standing crashing and of people openly protesting on the streets of the capital. | ||
On March 1982 the president's standing with the population did take a big hit after a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Kaiping, killing some seventy thousand people and injuring another eighty thousand. Emergency services in Kaiping collapsed under the strain of so many casualties and help from the central government was sluggish at best. Yang Qiu's words on national television that: 'Everything is under control, there are shortages of aid anywhere, we will efficiently take care of this small quake'. The president's words seemingly minimizing the scale of the tragedy and the gripping images coming from Kaiping of corpses buried under the rubble coupled with the shocking ineffectiveness of the government's response(Yang Qiu cycled through three different ministers of national emergencies during the crisis) was a big blow to the people's trust in the party. Althought Qiu tried to walk back his comments and declared a day of national mourning, the damage was done. Victim's associations would in time morph into groups campaigning for political change at the top, one of these was formed by a political unknown named [[Linge Chen]] who would unseat the party only ten years later. The [[1982 Kaiping earthquake]] was thus a watershed moment in [[Daxia]]n history, from then on the NRF would have to resort to outright electoral fraud and heavy handed repression to maintain its grip on power, and even this would prove to be not enough by the early 90's. | On March 1982 the president's standing with the population did take a big hit after a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Kaiping, killing some seventy thousand people and injuring another eighty thousand. Emergency services in Kaiping collapsed under the strain of so many casualties and help from the central government was sluggish at best. Yang Qiu's words on national television that: 'Everything is under control, there are shortages of aid anywhere, we will efficiently take care of this small quake'. The president's words seemingly minimizing the scale of the tragedy and the gripping images coming from Kaiping of corpses buried under the rubble coupled with the shocking ineffectiveness of the government's response(Yang Qiu cycled through three different ministers of national emergencies during the crisis) was a big blow to the people's trust in the party. Althought Qiu tried to walk back his comments and declared a day of national mourning, the damage was done. Victim's associations would in time morph into groups campaigning for political change at the top, one of these was formed by a political unknown named [[Linge Chen]] who would unseat the party only ten years later. The [[1982 Kaiping earthquake]] was thus a watershed moment in [[Daxia]]n history, from then on the NRF would have to resort to outright electoral fraud and heavy handed repression to maintain its grip on power, and even this would prove to be not enough by the early 90's. The era of NRF rule after the earthquake is named by historians as '''the Slow Death''', a period of inertia and decay as the economy slowed down dramatically and social unrest at the party's misrule grew exponentially. | ||