Wagdog
20-02-2007, 22:58
OOC: The time reference is according to 1 Day RL=1 Year NS like on storefronts. Strictly for historical purposes...
IC: "It is a great day for us all, citizens and comrades in our Revolution." General Secretary Carolinus Horridus was in his element, an offhand speech to his country with his wife at his side, smiling for the camera as he signed in legislation that she basically devised and wrote. Just the way she liked it too, proverbial "spider-woman" that she was half the time.
"It has been some eight decades since Wagdog's reapperance from obscurity, and since that time we have grown strong. Early on, the confusion and rioting surrounding the appearance of the Weremen, Elves and Vampires in our midst forced me to dismiss the National People's Congress entirely and enact martial law to restore order." An uncomfortable silence descends for a few seconds; many still live who were either young adults or children at that time, and remember it all too well.
"That order restored, and with it the franchise, no sooner did the Nazists of the Wagdoggie Blood and Soil Party try to hijack our glorious socialist experiment; turning our capital into a warzone and nearly taking my life with an assassin's bullet." In fact, actually taking it for a few moments, Horridus thought; but then squashed it down as the fact of how close he came to death was the entire reason for his odd pseudonym utterly extirpating his now-forgotten birth name from record or use. He fixes the camera with a laserlike intensity through his wire-framed glasses, his paunchy and scruffy appearance seeming more like a wrestler than a head of state. "But they failed, and have been broken and scattered to the winds in the years since; thanks to all of our efforts at resistance. And because of our progress in those efforts, I now feel comfortable signing this into law."
A flourish of the pen follows, to blooming reporters' flashbulbs and gasps of per-protocol awe, and then the explanation. "No longer are party quotas to be enforced in the National People's Congress. The Wagdoggie Revolutionary still has the Executive Prerogative," referring to the constitutional mandate that the General and Deputy General Secretaries both had to be WRP members. "But aside from that proverbial 'Founders' Privilege,' all parties' proportions in the legislature are now to be freely weighed according to their electoral success or failure. The system for State Congresses remains 'winner-take-all;' the winning party for a State gaining their governorship and executive prerogative to determine their State Council's makeup, as well as winning all their seats in the National People's Congress. But no longer do we in the Revolutionary Party feel any need to supposedly 'stuff,'" as certain critics alleged of the quota being abolished, "the National Congress with a mandatory 50% plurality of party-appointed delegates."
"The People's Political Consultative Conference serves well enough to represent party interests in those matters requiring such," the laws for that not being changed by this new measure in the slightest, "It shall ensure the balance of power between our various higher organs, and the security of both the People's rights and our revolutionary Constitution in so doing. But aside from that, we agree that we are all good Socialists here in one way or another; and it is high time that was legally acknowledged. Good luck, Comrades; and Always unto Victory!"
Applause, perhaps genuine even, follows this flourish as Horridus stands up, embraces his wife (equally paunchy and bespectacled as himself; even if at least pretty with shoulder-length straight auburn hair and a soft, almost rabbit-proportioned face.), and then shakes hands with the heads of Wagdog's five legalized parties: his wife for the ruling neo-Leninist Revolutionary Party, Secretary of State Rilir for the conservationist/conservative Greenwood Coalition, Secretary of Defense Mario Iliescu for the neo-Stalinist Noble Revolutionary Party, Secretary of the Treasury Wally Shortclaw for the neo-Maoist People's Revolutionary Party, and Education Secretary Justina Stephens for the Social Democrats.
IC: "It is a great day for us all, citizens and comrades in our Revolution." General Secretary Carolinus Horridus was in his element, an offhand speech to his country with his wife at his side, smiling for the camera as he signed in legislation that she basically devised and wrote. Just the way she liked it too, proverbial "spider-woman" that she was half the time.
"It has been some eight decades since Wagdog's reapperance from obscurity, and since that time we have grown strong. Early on, the confusion and rioting surrounding the appearance of the Weremen, Elves and Vampires in our midst forced me to dismiss the National People's Congress entirely and enact martial law to restore order." An uncomfortable silence descends for a few seconds; many still live who were either young adults or children at that time, and remember it all too well.
"That order restored, and with it the franchise, no sooner did the Nazists of the Wagdoggie Blood and Soil Party try to hijack our glorious socialist experiment; turning our capital into a warzone and nearly taking my life with an assassin's bullet." In fact, actually taking it for a few moments, Horridus thought; but then squashed it down as the fact of how close he came to death was the entire reason for his odd pseudonym utterly extirpating his now-forgotten birth name from record or use. He fixes the camera with a laserlike intensity through his wire-framed glasses, his paunchy and scruffy appearance seeming more like a wrestler than a head of state. "But they failed, and have been broken and scattered to the winds in the years since; thanks to all of our efforts at resistance. And because of our progress in those efforts, I now feel comfortable signing this into law."
A flourish of the pen follows, to blooming reporters' flashbulbs and gasps of per-protocol awe, and then the explanation. "No longer are party quotas to be enforced in the National People's Congress. The Wagdoggie Revolutionary still has the Executive Prerogative," referring to the constitutional mandate that the General and Deputy General Secretaries both had to be WRP members. "But aside from that proverbial 'Founders' Privilege,' all parties' proportions in the legislature are now to be freely weighed according to their electoral success or failure. The system for State Congresses remains 'winner-take-all;' the winning party for a State gaining their governorship and executive prerogative to determine their State Council's makeup, as well as winning all their seats in the National People's Congress. But no longer do we in the Revolutionary Party feel any need to supposedly 'stuff,'" as certain critics alleged of the quota being abolished, "the National Congress with a mandatory 50% plurality of party-appointed delegates."
"The People's Political Consultative Conference serves well enough to represent party interests in those matters requiring such," the laws for that not being changed by this new measure in the slightest, "It shall ensure the balance of power between our various higher organs, and the security of both the People's rights and our revolutionary Constitution in so doing. But aside from that, we agree that we are all good Socialists here in one way or another; and it is high time that was legally acknowledged. Good luck, Comrades; and Always unto Victory!"
Applause, perhaps genuine even, follows this flourish as Horridus stands up, embraces his wife (equally paunchy and bespectacled as himself; even if at least pretty with shoulder-length straight auburn hair and a soft, almost rabbit-proportioned face.), and then shakes hands with the heads of Wagdog's five legalized parties: his wife for the ruling neo-Leninist Revolutionary Party, Secretary of State Rilir for the conservationist/conservative Greenwood Coalition, Secretary of Defense Mario Iliescu for the neo-Stalinist Noble Revolutionary Party, Secretary of the Treasury Wally Shortclaw for the neo-Maoist People's Revolutionary Party, and Education Secretary Justina Stephens for the Social Democrats.