Puertego: Difference between revisions

The government of Puertego is officially a Unitary Marxist-Leninist Presidential Republic with the National Assembly being the nations unicameral legislature containing 250 members, Puertego's constitution officially claims that the country shall remain committed to socialism however this commitment has been called into question by many due to the governments increasingly capitalist reforms to the economy such as setting up Special Investment Zones, Getting rid of price controls, and banning unions and workers cooperatives. The National Assembly of Puertego is make up of 250 representatives from different districts around Puertego who serve 10-year terms with a 1 term limit elected via closed list party list proportional system, the National Assembly has the power to vote on and introduce new legislation and policies, appoint judges, declare war with the president's approval, overrule the president's veto via a unanimous vote, and alter the constitution via a unanimous vote and the express approval of the president as well as being the highest court of appeals. The judiciary maintains no independence from the government and maintains the death penalty which it sentences an average of 90 people to a year.

Puertego operates under civil law though with very little judicial independence and the courts being much more subordinate to the legislature than in most other countries with civil law, the 1997 constitution of Puertego is considered the supreme law of the country consisting entirely of written text with no unwritten conventions on it being considered legitimate. The Constitution of Puertego primarily covers the roles of different government bodies and the powers they have but also guarantees freedom of religion, this being one of the only freedoms written in the Puertegan constitution has been criticized by many international bodies for allowing all manner of human rights abuses and violations of civil rights to take place by the government. All manners of law in Puertego from criminal to family and property are considered federal responsibilities to enforce and uphold as is law enforcement with the government spending 12% of its budget on law enforcement in the country. The Puertegan government has the authority to declare any trial they see fit to be taken to a secret court where the media is unable to report on it.

The levels of corruption reported in Puertego have repeatedly been ranked as among some of the worst on the continent with nepotism, bribery, and embezzlement commonplace in the government with it being reported that embezzlement and bribery being equivalent to 12% of the national budget combined, corruption is especially common in law enforcement, education, healthcare, and immigration. The government of Puertego passed an "anti-corruption law" in 2012 corruption still runs rampant in the country with most corruption arrests made in the country being made against political rivals and opposition of the ruling party. Corruption in Puertego runs all the way up to the top level of government with the current president Matthias Torres being suspected of having embezzled as much as 645 million dollars though this has never been proven with the president himself claiming these are lies made up by the opposition to demonize him, so far anyone who has gone public with claiming Torres embezzled the money has been charged by the government with slander. Additionally, there have been many cases of the government granting land to foreign investors or to the state run mining or oil company and evicting the villagers currently living on said land with native communities disproportionately, so far as many as 5-8,000 Puertegan natives have been evicted off their land by the government.  

In Puertego the country's repeated and blatant human rights violations remain a significant concern with some of the most common issues regarding the nation's status on freedoms of association, speech, the press, and assembly with the government passing many pieces of legislation allowing them to seriously curb these freedoms with some of them being the 2010 insurrection and riot act which allows the government to break up any gathering peaceful or not if they deem it to soon cause "lawless and disorderly behavior" and the 2011 Defamation act which allows the government to charge people with libel, slander, or attempting to incite public disorder, additionally the government has been criticized by international observers for the status of torture by police and the poor overcrowded conditions in the nations prisons. international bodies have also expressed extreme concern over the nations policy of mass sentencing, detention without trial for up to a year, and the disappearances of human rights advocates at the hands of the nation's security forces and in its prisons. Puertego has repeatedly been ranked as one of the worst countries for press freedom and one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists with blackmail, threats, harassment, and violence all having been reported against the country's security forces by journalists with reports of security forces forcibly shutting down television stations and newspapers also being reported often.

The economy of Puertego is considered a mixed model economy based largely on natural resource extraction primarily via agriculture, fishing, and mining, manufacturing primarily of steel, chemicals, and textiles, and remittances from Puertegans living and working abroad with the final providing an estimated $32.5 billion each year from the 14 million Puertegans working abroad. The economic liberalizations brought by the incumbent president have switched the country from an extraction based planned economy to a more market based one split between extraction and industry, the country has adopted much greater economic freedoms than it had under any previous governments with the Special Investment Zones established under him meant to attract foreign investment through very reduced regulations and taxes to business operating there, though the government also maintains monopolies with their state run industries which operate primarily in utilities, banking, and natural resources. Economic growth in the nation has been relatively steady with the economy growing by an average of 8-9% each year since 2008 primarily attributed to the Special Investment Zones established at the time, foreign investors in Puertego get many benefits from the government for investing in the SEZ's including temporary subsidies for their businesses, introductory tax rates being set up for their business, and tax shelters being used so that not all the wealth they make from the business is subject to taxation in Puertego, these practices have widely gotten Puertego labeled as a tax haven. The poverty rate in Puertego is around 10% of the population living on less than $1.90 a day, 33.3% living on less than $3.20 a day, and 75% living on less than $5.50 a day, in addition the Puertegan government offers very little in terms of social welfare for average citizens, this combination means that there is a large amount of street crime in the nation's cities and a large black market estimated to be worth around $22 billion with this being allowed to happen by pervasive corruption in almost all levels of the government. Due to a rather large focus on natural resources the economy of Puertego can be very affected by natural disasters such as forest fires or floods. Puertego has an import to export ration of 1:12 though this number is predicted to rise in the future by the government who claim that they hope to get it to 1:20 in the next ten years though the validity of this hope has been called into question, Puertego's main exports are steel, raw minerals primarily gold, copper, and tin, chemicals, textiles, agricultural products primarily rubber, tobacco, and sugar while the country's main imports are electronics, fossil fuels, medicine, food, and fertilizer. Puertego has a debt to GDP ratio of 66% and a credit rating of BB- primarily due to the many governments that came before the current regime running deficits that spiraled the country into 4 different debt crises throughout its history, the national debt of Puertegto is currently being reduced by the government.