The Wheel of Elections (UPNG 1922)
If the most important political factions of Bogota had been given time to push forwards a campaign of information – or disinformation, their opponents would hiss between their teeth – it was possible they could have stayed in power.
After all, the ‘balance sheet’ when it came to the Aristocratic Republic of Merica wasn’t that bad. The local population might have forgotten it, but New Spain had utterly fallen apart during the last months of the Great War. Previous this military and economic collapse, one could readily admit the situation hadn’t been good either. Whether one called it ‘Mexican Empire’, ‘New Spain’, or any other name, the reality was that the nation once ruled from Mexico City was poor, underdeveloped, and suffering from the multitude of effects which always exist when the government is not powerful enough to administer properly the provinces.
All of this to say that the average Merican was nine times out of ten far wealthier than he would have been thirty years ago, and the administration of the country in question was far less corrupt.
Unfortunately, both opponents on each side of the divide weren’t exactly in the mood to recognise the boons of this. The native population hated the reality that this corruption was now done by foreigners, not them, and the Granadans were aghast at the idea that all the rules imposed by Bogota were null and void the moment it was done outside the frontiers. It was very convenient that for decades, small businessmen and city majors were arrested on bribery charges, while at the same time ministers and high-ranked characters improved their monthly income by participating in international robbery.
The former government members could protest all they want about their pure intentions, the public was exhausted, and the formation of a ‘Conservative Party’ merging most of the Federalists and Confederates primary figures confirmed the fears of many that the politicians were all guilty for the latest round of misfortunes and scandals. The self-proclaimed ‘Conservatives’ were soon labelled ‘Ultra-Corrupt and Conservatives’, ‘Colonial Conservative Party’, and ‘Profit and Exploitation’.
Millions of citizens were tired of this cycle of elections which changed nothing, and their anger allowed the New Liberal Party to be created and present credible candidates for the next elections. The credo of this new legislative force was simple: enough with the foreign adventures, decrease the taxes, decrease the ever-rising military spending, and the UPNG would put an end to these one-sided economic ultimatums which made sure few nations outside of its core of true allies liked their republic.
In the first days of election campaign, the Conservative Party didn’t take these shouts very seriously. Neither did most of the foreign agents commenting the events to their masters an ocean away. There were hundreds of new minor parties everywhere, and the New Liberal Party didn’t seem to be more special than thousands of others.
It was only when they began of outright ceasing the military support continuously sent to Californian Taiwan, a move which was widely popular in the key cities, that the establishment began to worry seriously. The Californian ambassador and his mission did more than worry, obviously.
The sum of the defence plans for Taiwan was made possible because the anti-Chinese coalition had the UPNG among its core founders. If the Granadan Philippine fleet chose to leave the coalition, the risk of having a Chinese invasion fleet on its doorstep before a month was over rose exponentially.
The main shareholders of the great trade companies of the UPNG were also conscious of that risk. So was the disavowed political class. These men had been trying to find a solution to this problem for years, and they had failed to find one. The reality they had been confronted with, but that they had never tried to convince their voters to believe in, was that the UPNG wasn’t among the Great Powers of the world. Their industrialisation efforts weren’t sufficient, and the population levels were too low to matter. Bogota couldn’t win a conflict on land with France, China, or Russia, and against the latter two, it was dubious they would achieve more than a painful stalemate at sea. The great advantage the UPNG retained over the Celestial Empire was superiority in oil production, but since a total blockade of the Chinese would likely not be tolerated a second time, it was not a winning hand.
The Conservative-backed newspapers thus tried to ‘educate’ their citizens on the risks the illogical decisions of the Liberals would have for the UPNG’s economy and reach all over the world. After Taiwan, many retired Admiral were prompt to exclaim, the Chinese army and fleets would hardly feel satiated by an island’s conquest. The Philippines and all the islands part of their Republic would be next. The Brunei Sultanate, the oil jewel of the East Indies, would be left defenceless against a terrible onslaught if fleets were repatriated to Panama.
The reaction to these ‘truths’ was mitigated. While the Chinese Empire, with no presentation on the ground, was hardly in position to deny these claims, the attempt to create in the minds and hearts a ‘Chinese peril’ could not be considered a victory. China was far from the New World. While they were Chinese immigrants in the UPNG, few of them had crossed the Pacific in the last decade. The Chuan Dynasty was a mystery, and the last conflict had resulted in a Chinese reunification while the Granadan Navy watched powerlessly. The reports of the new naval build-up ordered by the Celestial Empress were dismissed as rumours most of the time, and when they didn’t, a certain form of anti-Asiatic prejudice played out.
The reality was that for all the diatribes and warnings, this was an enemy too distant and not enough threatening to catch the attention of the public for long. Merica was next door, and the tax collectors came every year. The Chinese did not. The Conservatives continuously tried to move the political fight onto their area of predilection, the foreign affairs, but the Liberals insisted the ‘internal front’ was their priority.
And since the previous government’s backers didn’t manage to lie convincingly about future decreases of taxes, when Election Day arrived, their defeat was absolutely total.
