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National Reconstruction Front (Daxia): Difference between revisions
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National Reconstruction Front (Daxia) (view source)
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During [[Min Bib Doda]]'s last year in office his government had borrowed excessively from overseas lending institutions to finance big ticket projects and speed their completion in a rare display of short term thinking and fiscal irresponsibility by Doda; he desperately wanted to give his chosen successor a boost in the polls. To start paying off the principal and accumulated interests of these onerous loans, Yang Qiu was now forced to implement measures of austerity or 'Republican Austerity' as he liked to call it. He ordered massive cutbacks in provision of health and social services, slashed education and school budgets, froze salary raises across the board (not even to keep up with inflation). All major infrastructure projects were put on hold and he even started to cut down pensions, an incredibly costly political move as the elderly were assiduous NRF voters. By turning the debts incurred by Doda on his behalf into something every [[Daxia]]n had to suffer for, Qiu destroyed any goodwill he had left with the public. People on the street started calling him the 'Old Satrap' and people said that if he slept through cabinet meetings the country was being led by an old man asleep at the wheel. There were serious doubts about the wisdom of Qiu running for a second term due to his clear and rising unpopularity. Yang Qiu silenced these 'tapeworms in the party's belly' with the intelligence services which remained fully loyal, although some of the 'tapeworms', many important of them political operators, began to quietly distance themselves. The president was duly confirmed as the NRF presidential candidate for 1984 during a televised party conference, widely mocked for the grave demeanour of the party heads sitting next to the president, the worry evident in their expressions. | During [[Min Bib Doda]]'s last year in office his government had borrowed excessively from overseas lending institutions to finance big ticket projects and speed their completion in a rare display of short term thinking and fiscal irresponsibility by Doda; he desperately wanted to give his chosen successor a boost in the polls. To start paying off the principal and accumulated interests of these onerous loans, Yang Qiu was now forced to implement measures of austerity or 'Republican Austerity' as he liked to call it. He ordered massive cutbacks in provision of health and social services, slashed education and school budgets, froze salary raises across the board (not even to keep up with inflation). All major infrastructure projects were put on hold and he even started to cut down pensions, an incredibly costly political move as the elderly were assiduous NRF voters. By turning the debts incurred by Doda on his behalf into something every [[Daxia]]n had to suffer for, Qiu destroyed any goodwill he had left with the public. People on the street started calling him the 'Old Satrap' and people said that if he slept through cabinet meetings the country was being led by an old man asleep at the wheel. There were serious doubts about the wisdom of Qiu running for a second term due to his clear and rising unpopularity. Yang Qiu silenced these 'tapeworms in the party's belly' with the intelligence services which remained fully loyal, although some of the 'tapeworms', many important of them political operators, began to quietly distance themselves. The president was duly confirmed as the NRF presidential candidate for 1984 during a televised party conference, widely mocked for the grave demeanour of the party heads sitting next to the president, the worry evident in their expressions. | ||
Yang Qiu invariably won the election of 1984 but dropped fourteen percentage points from his first victory, down to sixty nine percent of the vote. Going by the rule that the party fraudulently doubled the number of votes received, it can be said with confidence that Qiu won no more than thirty six percent in truth. Strangely for Daxian presidential elections to that date, the president was dogged throught the campaign by the candidate of a small, recently formed political formation named the [[Party of Daxian Democrats]]. Its candidate was a total unknown, some accountant who looked as if he had been plucked from a catalogue of bureaucrats, but this [[Linge Chen]] was a strident and irascible orator who shamelessly mocked his elderly rival. At one point in the campaign [[Linge Chen]] sought out the president at a campaign stop in [[Minxia City]] and confronted him about the continued spilling of industrial waste on [[Lake Zhenzhu]], at one point pointing at Qiu with his finger and poking him in the chest. The president tried to play the elder statesman but looked clearly annoyed and rattled before the cameras. [[Linge Chen]] would later be arrested and charged with disrespecting the president and be prevented from continuing to campaign by a court order but nonetheless he made an impact; his small party would get almost twenty percent of the vote. In his book 'The Wave', [[Linge Chen]] revealed that important members of the NRF both from the Politburo and regional party leaderships met with him in secret and offered their resources to his project. Chen further claims that it was his ideas that attracted them but the truth may be less flattering, scared and sidelined members of the nomenklatura hedging their bets against a Yang Qiu loss. It is this quiet transfer of cadres from one party to another that may have been the deciding factor in the shocking surprise victory of [[Linge Chen]] and the [[Party of Daxian Democrats| | Yang Qiu invariably won the election of 1984 but dropped fourteen percentage points from his first victory, down to sixty nine percent of the vote. Going by the rule that the party fraudulently doubled the number of votes received, it can be said with confidence that Qiu won no more than thirty six percent in truth. Strangely for Daxian presidential elections to that date, the president was dogged throught the campaign by the candidate of a small, recently formed political formation named the [[Party of Daxian Democrats]]. Its candidate was a total unknown, some accountant who looked as if he had been plucked from a catalogue of bureaucrats, but this [[Linge Chen]] was a strident and irascible orator who shamelessly mocked his elderly rival. At one point in the campaign [[Linge Chen]] sought out the president at a campaign stop in [[Minxia City]] and confronted him about the continued spilling of industrial waste on [[Lake Zhenzhu]], at one point pointing at Qiu with his finger and poking him in the chest. The president tried to play the elder statesman but looked clearly annoyed and rattled before the cameras. [[Linge Chen]] would later be arrested and charged with disrespecting the president and be prevented from continuing to campaign by a court order but nonetheless he made an impact; his small party would get almost twenty percent of the vote. In his book 'The Wave', [[Linge Chen]] revealed that important members of the NRF both from the Politburo and regional party leaderships met with him in secret and offered their resources to his project. Chen further claims that it was his ideas that attracted them but the truth may be less flattering, scared and sidelined members of the nomenklatura hedging their bets against a Yang Qiu loss. It is this quiet transfer of cadres from one party to another that may have been the deciding factor in the shocking surprise victory of [[Linge Chen]] and the [[Party of Daxian Democrats|PDD]] in 1986, snatching the [[Mirzak|capital]] from the government. The defeat in the largest city of the country was a great humiliation to the party and to the president personally. Many NRF insiders attribute the defeat to treason by important cadres who either switched sides and funneled NRF votes to [[Linge Chen]]'s party or simply enacted a campaign of 'limp wrists', that is they basically surrendered the election without a fight. Both options are viable as the NRF local structure in the city was deepy aggrieved by the imposition of a candidate who was not well known in [[Mirzak]] and who had been put forth over the heads of more competitive options. The [[Party of Daxian Democrats|PDD]] may also have offered to overlook and paper over cases of corruption by the NRF administrations of the city if they got to power. Yang Qiu responded to the rumors of backstabbing by having the party initiate proceedings to first sanction and then expel several important party bosses of the capital. This restored party discipline on the surface but Qiu's leadership had already been near fatally damaged by the ordeal and it would only continue to weaken in the last two years of his presidency. | ||