TLIAPOT
- Thread starter Blair
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- dystopia morgenthau wikibox tl
You are assuming that East Germany would simply try to force everything in a stalinish way. This East Germany is much less radical than OTl. Thus they would likely be willing to compromise, especially now that the ideological conflict is mostly over. Not only that but with Market communism a lot more prominent they even have a template on how to do it.
That's a really good point. I think the East Germans have to agree for a prominent and official position of the Catholic and the main Protestant Churches (Lutheran, United and Reformed) and the Yellow. The East Germans will likely demand SPD join SED and the Red Unions of the West join the FDGB, which will give problems, but it's not impossible that a acceptable compromise will be reached. But we can't see a reunification like OTL, which was just the West annexing the East, it have to be more of a compromise.
Of course West German still have to deal with the fact that they have a high birth rate, but we could simply see that feed the need for labour in a new industrial expansion.
Not necessarily. When Gorbachev came to power he tried to reverse the existing model and largely failed, the same is true for Romanov even if the latter has pulled off an aggressive foreign policy.
November 1992, roughly a year after the dissolution of the USA, to give the parties time to campaign. Though technically the Sovereign Assembly goes up for election all at once like the US house, only half the seats will be contested this time due to an informal agreement between the parties and UIS founders.
In 1992, the first elections were held for the Sovereign Assembly of the Union of Independent States. They were the first nationwide elections since 1978 to take place outside the influence Buckleymania and the first relatively free election to place in the former United States since 1876, the last year in which Negros exercised the right to vote in the American South. Upon being appointed to his new office Evan Mecham, Acting Governor General of the Union of Independent States, announced that the UEZ network was to be dissolved, all political prisoners to be released, and the rights of all citizens to exercise the franchise to be respected "at all costs".
The security forces which operated the UEZs had been armed with old military equipment deemed a liability in fighting the sarasateana. To combat this, Mecham ordered the National Salvation Junta to break the hold of any private security force that refused to surrender the UEZ which they had been entrusted. The bombastically dubbed "UEZ Wars" were a short affair, but riled up all sorts of resentment from Southerners who saw only Northern armies occupying Southern cities. Nevermind that UEZ Wars were raging all across the country. Once brought under the control UIS authorities, those who had been living in the former UEZs were encouraged to register to vote. In the words of Gore Vidal, "only Evan Mecham would chose to enforce democracy at the barrel of a gun". Under the UIS Basic Statue of 1991, all those aged 18 to 70 were required to exercise the franchise and those either in the 16 to 18 bracket or 70+ were given discretion over whether they participated or not.
The 1992 state sponsored "voter registration drive" focused solely on the 18-70 bracket, as such turnout was decidedly lower than in subsequent elections. Additionally, while White voters were encouraged to vote in person, Negros were instead directed to vote by mail. The latter policy was intended to protect Negro voters from reprisal at polling stations, but more than a few zealous post offices rifled through mailbags with malign intent. As the UIS postal service fell under the jurisdiction of the central government, Governor General Mecham subsequently order the sacking of all southern post office staff which had presided over voting irregularities. The takeover of the post offices by "Mechamites" ensured that subsequent ballot collections would operate without "Firebagging", the burning of bags of Negro votes by unscrupulous racist postal workers.
The entirety of the unicameral Sovereign Assembly was held by National Salvation Party prior to the election. The Salvation Party was an ad hoc coalition of conventioneers which had agreed to govern jointly until the first real election. Both Governor General Mecham and former Junta Head Norman Schwarzkopf felt that joint governance needed to continue in order to ensure stability in the new country, but on this matter that had been met with flat out refusal by various conventioneers. For many, the most important first step was to establish a genuinely competitive democracy. In the end a compromise was reached. Participating parties would reserve half their lists of National Salvation members of their own volition, allowing a "caretaker" government to continue whilst conscientiously preventing the setting of a precedent wherein a single powerful party could continue its rule on the thin pretext of "promoting stability. Speaker Schwarzkopf, the non partisan leader of the former governing Junta, reluctantly continued to head National Salvation despite his reservations about "this politics nonsense".
National Salvation promised to follow the wishes of the majority, Schwarzkopf stressed that he would only act to prevent backsliding and to block the efforts of a possible elected neo-Buckleyite majority. As it would happen, such fears proved unfounded and the elections resulted in an eclectic mix of former opposition groups. The most successful parties were naturally those had a long history of opposing the old regime...
Solidarity, a fusion of various socialist leaning parties, took home the second largest slice of the pie by virtue of being formed by the men who had been "right all along" about Buckleymania. Grange and Conscience, two parties which lingered at the local level despite their wipeout from federal politics, leveraged their strong regional support to gain a respectable showing. Redemption or "the New Redeemers" as they likened themselves, drew votes from southerners who resented Mecham's closure of UEZs and the reintroduction of Negro voting. U&F, the standard fare conservative party, performed about as well as expected thanks to the anti-conservative, anti-Buckley backlash. Billy Graham's Crusaders, formed of the most fervently anti-Buckleyite members of Covenant after the return of States' Rights dominance to the South, were disappointed by their inability to draw votes from previously reliable Covenant strongholds like North Carolina. Kibbutz, a Jewish advocacy party, performed rather well when one considers the mass emigration of American Jewery from the country in the wake of the lifting of the Buckleymania travel restrictions. Finally, Pete Domenici, iconoclastic Mayor of Santa Fe, managed to strike the right cord with New Mexico voters who were both pleased with Mechamite conservatism but upset with the dissolution of the former United States. By leveraging his personal popularity, Domenici performed markedly better than other "pro-USA" independents who struggled to define themselves as anything other than grumpy old men who were scared of change...
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What are the conservative and liberal parties? I pray the socialists don't take over
Peace and Conscience are liberal to varying degrees. A Conservative party hasn't been able to punch its way out yet, expect for Redemption in the South.
I guess the National Salvation party is conservative to an extent. I'd like to see a party that's conservative on economic/defense issues but liberal on civil rights