NationStates Jolt Archive

What were now the Confederal people had been through a series of fairly rapid political and social changes ever since the Danaan Civil War in 1990. They had seen war, terrorism, several constitutions, a loose Commonwealth, oppressive regimes, liberation from said regimes and, at the end of it, the emergence of a new nation. Many of these changes had happened so fast that people had hardly been able to catch their breath. Now, however, the new system seemed destined to stick in more or less its present form.

It had not, of course, been free of disruption. The Sons of the Reformation had continued their attacks, leading to a joint Confederal-Abtian effort to crush them. There had been a quite recent coup attempt in Achi with leaders of the Achi Army Civil Defense Force seeking to overthrow a corrupt local government. That had been dealt with, of course, and Confederal authority restored and new elections held. There had been problems with Tartarus, Kaitan-Leagran and a few other nations. Still, none of this had fundamentally damaged the structure of the new nation. In fact, in each crisis it had both adapted itself to circumstances and proved its viability.

Politics, of course, was a zoo. People were still adjusting to the new electoral system. Many were just learning to vote while others were learning to responsibly handle new powers, such as the recall or the popular repeal of legislation. Prior to the formation of the Confederated Peoples, many of its citizens had not had access to quality education or to the meaningful participation in public life which they now enjoyed. It took practice and education to learn how to make such decisions responsibly and with due caution. Naturally, in the last few months, there had been many recalls and repeals and the Confederal Assembly seemed almost fluid in its composition. This had been expected, of course, and was expected to begin to fade within a few months and to fade completely in a few years. Most theorists predicted that there would be no more than one recall of a Deputy or Senator per year by the end of the Confederation’s first decade.

Nonetheless, in the short term, politics was heating up rather than calming down. An excess of decentralization in the military was blamed for the disaster in Achi. The Federal Party was both a strong advocate of such decentralization and its Confederal Councillor headed the Department of Defense. It rapidly became a political target as the other parties frantically scrambled to take its seats. The Councillor, however, showed no sign of resigning and the Federal Party did not retreat from its positions. It maintained, quite staunchly, that one disaster did not negate the fundamental value of a federal approach.

This wasn’t the only thing troubling the Confederal citizenry as they frantically rushed to undo what they had done in the last election and to reselect their representatives. Now that relative peace and stability had returned, the Confederals at last had the chance to really reflect on the radical changes of the last seventeen years and to fully confront the largely unresolved racial, religious and gender issues which had created many of the recent problems and which were more disguised than eliminated by the thoroughly multiculturalist and egalitarian Confederal state.

Abu Gadi was a small town located outside of Solomon, the capital of the Confederal Member of Selinia. Its population spoke Arabic as comfortably (or more comfortably) than English and its religious life was dominated by the local Sunni mosque. Politically, the Progressive Democratic Party was dominant although they were strongly challenged by the Socialist Party on the one hand and the United Islamic Alliance on the other. Radicals associated with the Communist Party and similar organizations had a significant presence as well.

The basic policy of Mayor Mahmoud Abu-Lughod was one of local development, designed to improve people’s daily lives and to create a more vibrant local economy, less dependent on Solomon for jobs and consumer goods. He had made investments in infrastructure to attract business and investments in education to make the townspeople more desirable as employees and more likely to succeed in professional careers. He had taken full advantage of Member and Confederal programs designed to develop underprivileged areas economically. He had also worked with both public and private partners to seek to provide loans to would be local entrepreneurs. He had worked to establish an adult literacy program in the city. He had won election three times on the slogan of “Helping People Help Themselves.”

However, it was becoming increasingly hard for Abu-Lughod to convince people that their answers lay in Abu Gadi. After all, most of them worked in low income jobs in Solomon itself and many of them only wanted the ability to afford housing in Solomon. They wanted rent controls, better public housing, better pay and stronger anti-discrimination laws to allow them to live comfortably in the city itself. Furthermore, they wanted better access to the city from Abu Gadi in terms of public transportation and roads. Try as he might, it was not in the power of Abu-Lughod or the Progressive Democrat dominated Abu Gadi Town Council to directly address these issues. Correspondingly, they had instead begun to use their public positions to call for the Selinian Knesset and the Solomon City Council to enact reforms. Specifically, they had called for laws requiring that any publicly rented housing have all signs in English in addition to any other language used. This would make the many housing complexes which now had all signs exclusively in either Hebrew or French more diverse and more accessible to Arabs. Acting as a party activist rather than as an Abu Gadi public official, he called a demonstration to be held in Solomon in cooperation with the Fair Housing Coalition. This earned him some criticism for radicalism within the party.

Nonetheless, the day of the demonstration came. There were about a thousand people there. Some of them were hardcore activists who went to demonstrations all around the country. Others were activists in the Fair Housing Coalition or the more radical political parties. Most were simply residents of Abu Gadi and the other predominantly Islamic suburbs of Solomon. Like most demonstrations, many of the signs tried to link the actual issue at stake with the pet cause of the person or organization who made it. “Free Vespasian” signs were everywhere as were signs reading “Free Palestine.” Other signs identified gay rights groups, feminists, unions and other groups not intimately concerned who sought to show solidarity with the Arab population of Solomon’s environs. Only about half the signs had anything to do with housing.

The police, of course, were out in force, cordoning off the protest area from traffic or counter-demonstrators and making sure nothing got out of hand. It was a legal protest so, while reserved to the point of coldness, they weren’t belligerent. A few of them joked among themselves and the atmosphere seemed generally relaxed. Political demonstrations did, after all, happen every day in the Confederated Peoples.