Kalopia

[Rogue]

MORNING HELIOS
Kallívas calls for early elections following political instability
February 5732

KÓK leader Theodóros Kallívas

Helios - Centre Party leader Theodóros Kallívas has called for all parties to unite in calling early legislative elections following political instability created by the fued between President Antonios Lakaridis and his Phalanx party. The president has, following the dispute, been expelled from the party, with political uncertainty looming as the crisis develops. Kallívas, who founded the Centre Party several months ago as a moderate, rural focussed alternative to the two major parties, sees the dispute and rift between President and Party as "a potential source of deadlock" and has called for early elections to "clear the field and provide a mandate for any new government to govern alongside this now independent President."

KÓK has been reluctant to push for political change in the past few months, seeking to garner support by building its organization within the regions of the country slowly. Additionally it has tried to keep lukewarm relations with several parties, positioning itself as a flexible governing parter as long as local rights are respected. These calls for early election put an end to its neutrality, with Kallívas directly appealing to the other governing party, Kalopian Spring, to "take responsibility and end the uncertainty." 

If elections were to be held today, Kalopian Spring would likely win in a fragmented political landscape. Recent polling suggests that the dramatic fall of Phalanx could lead to a coalition government of multiple parties, with the two major parties both losing a significant number of seats. KÓK leadership has however opened its doors to anyone seeking serious dialogue, making clear that it does not rule out cooperating with any party, even Phalanx, as long as parties respect its positions. 

[Aethan]

Moraitou wins party secretariat; announces profound changes including support for early elections as he lashes out against other Kalopian parties: "You had the chance to support a better president"

Former Health minister defeats Yorgos Stavriades by narrow margin as he says Kalopian Spring will support early elections "to give people a voice"

The Kalopian Herald — January 5732

HELIOS – In a tense electoral night in Kalopian Spring headquarters, at approximately 1am Theseus Moraitou was announced as the winner of the party secretariat election, defeating founder and until now party secretary Yorgos Stavriades by the slimmest of margins, with a a 50.12% v. 49.78%. While his rival lamented his defeat and his ousting from the party he founded, he acknowledged Moraitou's victory and announced his full support for his role, wishing him "the best of luck" to direct "Kalopia's only alternative for a brighter future". 

Talking to supporters inside the party's HQ following his victory, the former swimming prodigy and licensed physiotherapist by the University of Helios said tonight was "one of the happiest nights for him", and that he would work hard to ensure that Kalopian citizens feel "the same joy as him" when choosing to vote for Kalopian Spring.

"Our party is the only real and strong voice of Kalopian left. We are the voice of the workers, of farmers, of scientists, we are the only party that can bring together everyone is this nation towards a common goal: the betterment of our great nation".

Following his election, he immediately announced some changes regarding the position previously held by Kalopian Spring deputies in the parliament, the most important one being the party's vote in favor for early elections, with their vote being the key to make the proposal succeed. 

"We believe that, after the constitutional changes our nation has experienced, it is time to give people a choice. We do so as we are believers in direct democracy and the need of having the average citizen becoming more and more involved in politics and not just once every legislature, and we do so with a conviction. But we do so also having full confidence in this coalition government with Phalanx, knowing that we have brought deep and meaningful changes to the Kalopian society in the span of just two years that are unmatched. And we do so with the firm conviction that only by working with the populist forces of this country, the real voice of the Kalopian people, can this country move forward".

Following the drama surrounding President Lakaridis and his split with now its former party Phalanx, Mr. Moraitou lashed out against the other Kalopian parties, accusing them of being "responsible" of him being in this position in the very first place. He didn't mention names, but everyone knows it was the decision of the minority rights parties Wantuni Freedom – who called both candidates "equally bad" – and the Majatran Socialist Ba’athist Party - Wantuni Region – who endorsed the current President – not to support President Mr. Metrotis a decisive decision in the outcome of the election.

"They had the opportunity to endorse a different candidate, a serious and hard-working man: Alexandros Metrotis. Instead, they – with the honorable exception of the Kalopian Democratic Party – are as responsible as Phalanx of having this man at the highest position of our nation, in the very first place. They said both candidates were the same, that there was no difference between them. Well, now they see. It's such a hypocritical move now to ask for the resignation or impeachment of the president when they knew, since before his election, who he was and what his past was. And worst of all: some are not asking for his resignation due to his declarations but because he restore the legality of abortion and are accusing him of not being "at his fullest mental capacity" and that's the reasoning behind his impeachment, can you believe it? Well, we are all adults here, and one has to be r¡fully responsible of their choices. I did, I resigned from my post the moment things went a way I couldn't support. Others in this country are far from that, and it's because of them that we now find ourselves in this position. To them, I say this: don't point fingers at Kalopian Spring and don't make us responsible for the success or failure of any decision regarding our Head of State. We did our party, and we did our best. They are responsible for where do we find ourselves in now".

[Zanz]

Sources: HaN may join gov't; party insiders alarmed at impression of support for Lakaridis
April 5732

Following snap elections this month that saw the Thanopoulous government lose its majority in parliament, sources close to the matter indicate that negotiations to form a new broader coalition include a perhaps unexpected player: the Huriyat al-Najd (HaN).

HaN itself saw a decline in fortunes at the polls, losing 3.2% in a contest that saw all other opposition parties rise. Still, paths to a majority for Phalanx and Kalopian Spring are narrow. Rumors indicate that the Kalopian Democratic Party, which has voted with all parties at least half of the time, serves at the glue of the proposed coalition. P-KS-KDP alone has 150 seats, just shy of the majority needed, however, and HaN seems to be "in the running" according to sources close to the matter.

A minor party uprising has begun at the news, according to HaN insiders, at the prospect of aligning the party with Phalanx, which until recently supported now-independent president Antonios Lakaridis. The "People's President" was expelled from Phalanx after a rant against minorities. Lakaridis himself has declared the events "fake news" despite the recording coming from an event attended by several people. Most controversial is that the reported government agreement would require parties to oppose the official legislative censure of Lakaridis proposed by Dynamis.

Still, experts say, despite the risks of giving the impression of support for a bigot, there may be a path to success for HaN in the agreement. The party will likely state that it has reached an agreement with Phalanx itself, which has expelled the president, and not the president directly. Further, the HaN will paint itself as poised to make a clear positive impact on the lives of minorities in Kalopia by operating from the inside. The members of the cabinet from the HaN will also almost certainly be ethnic and religious minorities, which HaN will paint as a victory for diversity in the face of bigotry in Kalopia.

[RedReaper]

Opinion: Populists Make Faustian Pact with Autonomists

Socialists Let Separatists In Through The Back Door

Liberals and Nationalists Regroup as Rally Makes First Gains

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Helios - April 5732: Last Friday the polls closed on a divided Kalopia. Turnout was higher than most analysts expected, highlighting the importance of the election in the eyes of voters. In the run up to the vote that had been much talk of a collapse in government support following Presidential statements that had caused much controversy. Even Phalanx throwing their President to the wolves was expected to not save them. However, when the dust had settled the outcome was better for the government than expected, Phalanx had lost almost 20% of their previous support, but the unholy alliance of Populists and Socialists would continue to govern, this time in a wider coalition.
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Most would have assumed Phalanx would have looked to their right for allies, with the growth of autonomist support posing such a threat to the Republic. Alas, to the shock of many, they have instead thrown in their support with the very separatists their President had railed against. Perhaps guilt and fear of losing the Majatran vote forever swayed their hand? Or perhaps they only claim to oppose autonomy to rile up their base. The New Nation's sources in Phalanx emphasised that it was the right's support for private industry and opposition to welfarism which made them unwelcome coalition partners. If Phalanx would happily ally with separatists to keep their nanny state alive, can they ever really pretend to be nationalist again?

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Although the liberal nationalists gained seats, in the form of the Centre Party and Rally, they have so far failed to bridge the gap between themselves and the voters. Populism continues to sell, even when the Populist parties break their promises. Parties opposed to the Social Welfare and Autonomist agendas gained 23.4% of the vote, far too low to form a minority coalition, and that's assuming these parties would even collaborate. It is clear that more work is needed to build a party machine capable of making the changes this country desperately needs.

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In his concessions speech, People's Rally Party founder Iosif Balliadis emphasised the need for new leadership in the face of the new politics of the left. Stepping down, he has granted Rally an opportunity to regroup and establish themselves as a potential party of the right in Kalopian politics. Vlasis Rondou, a stalwart of the parties centre-right, seems destined to replace Balliadis' libertarian old-breed, bringing with him fresh ideas and new energy. We can only hope that either Rally, or another party of the centre-right, seizes the empty space at the centre of Kalopian politics and begins to undo the damage of populism before it is too late.

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Zinon Valakos - Chief editor of The New Nation

[font='‘Palatino Linotype’', '‘Book Antiqua’', Palatino, serif]Zinon Valakos[/font]

[Rogue]

KÓK "dissapointed" in HaN over participation in new government
April 5732

Helios - Following the news that the Huriyat al-Najd party would vote in favor of its participation in the new Thanopoulos government, newly elected MP and KÓK party leader Theodóros Kallívas expressed his "dissapointment" over the decision. The election saw the Centre Party win its first representation in national parliament, capturing 20 seats and 6.6% of the vote. 

The result was seen as a opening by the party and its newly elected lawmakers for a coalition government without Phalanx. Such a government could consist of the KS-Baathists-KDP and HaN with Centre Party support. According to Kallívas, talking to reporters shortly after the results were announced, such a coalition would "be more favourable to the rights of the rural population" then a new Phalanx government. 

When HaN formally announced its intention of accepting responsibility in a new government led by Phalanx,  Kallívas called it "a missed opportunity", expressing dissapointment in the fact that HaN "seemingly values a position in cabinet more then a chance at greater autonomy for our disadvantaged communities." 

Despite the dissapointment, the Centre Party under Kallívas had indicated its willingness to work with the new government on the issues that matter, promising to be "a constructive part of the oppossition." Additionally, the party has started expanding with several new local chapters, seeking to broaden its base and lean more on its populist and centrist nature rather then its agrarian roots. Whether this approach will help it expand its base is something that remains to be seen.

[Rogue]

Helios - During a packed party conference in the capital city of Helios, the Centre Party revealed its "campaign manifesto", to serve as a guidebook for the party in upcoming campaigns. The manifesto is seen as a first step in a proposed modernization of the party, with Katarina Papatzi, the youngest MP for the party, simultaniously being elected to the position of Deputy Leader. 

The manifesto describes the ultimate goal of the party, which is to become "a people's movement that bridges the divide between rural and urban communities." No longer is the sole purpose its ambition to represent only rural voices in parliament. Instead, the party will push for policies thast benefit both communities and elevate the position of what it still refers to as the "smallfolk". 

The party conference announcing the changes was visibly tense, with motions to ammend the manifesto being thrown around left and right. The upcoming "Future Faction" within the party, consisting of young, populist members, showed all present that its influence is growing. The establishment led by party leader Theodóros Kallívas meanwhile managed to balance the scales and remain at the wheel, appointing Papatzi to placate the growing threat that the Future Faction poses. The manifesto itself is also a response to the changing atmosphere within the party, with the leadership under Kallívas seeking to balance the traditional interests of the rural base with the demands of the more urban youth within the party. 

Despite the under the hood tension between newly developing factions within the party, the conference unanimously elected  Kallívas as the proposed presidential nominee for the presidential election scheduled in two years time. Kallívas, a moderate, is seen as a candidate that might be able to garner the support of other parties with his pledge to only serve one term and to renounce party membership if elected. Future Faction members seemed all to eager to nominate  Kallívas with those conditions, seeing a opportunity for "their" Papatzi to take over if the founder does get elected to the presidency. 

The conference concluded with the annual party budget and plans for the next year, which mainly include a major recruitment drive, a change to the navy blue as the party its flagship colour and the expansion and support of/for local chapters. 

το μεγαλο kók is the party newspaper of the Centre Party

[Aethan]

Kalopian Spring celebrates approval of same-sex marriage and women's equal working rights as Moraitou announces presidential bill

Nail-bitting parliamentary session grants victory to the party proposals expanding civil rights to traditionally discriminated groups in Kalopia

The Kalopian Herald — September 5732

HELIOS – General Secretary of Kalopian Spring, Theseus Moraitou, has taken to social media to celebrate what he considers "some of Kalopian Spring's greatest achievements," including the legalization of same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of same-sex relationships, the inclusion of gay people and women in the military on the same terms as other service members, and the equalization of labor rights between men and women.

The two bills – Rights and Freedoms and Marriage and Sexual Relationships – have been approved by a majority of the Parliament of Kalopia, although on both occasions they were opposed by the largest party in the government and the First Minister’s party, the Phalanx. However, President Lakaridis assured Kalopian Spring that he would not veto the laws, marking a fundamental step in the expansion of civil rights in Kalopia.

In his post in social media, the general secretary of KA and minister of Foreign Affairs said it was a "great day for Kalopia", vowing to "continue the change". Civil society organizations focused on human rights, as well as LGBT and feminist groups, have welcomed the passage of these laws and criticized the parties that voted against them.

"There are some who view us as second-class citizens, but Parliament has shown that there is a majority in favor of civil rights and true equality in this country" said Athanasios Padopoulos, president of the Organization for Freedom.

"Every citizen is born free and equal in Kalopia, and from now on, they will also grow up and live as equals regardless of their sexual orientation or gender" declared Moraitou, who made special mention of the amendment that allows women and members of the LGBT community to serve in the military on equal terms with the rest of their colleagues. "Serving one's country is the greatest source of pride one can have. If a citizen wants to do so, why should we prevent them? Many of those who voted against the measure would love to have even a fraction of the dignity and love for their country that those they seek to discriminate against possess."

Mr. Moraitou also took the opportunity today to announce his presidential candidacy for the 5735 elections, after receiving his party's endorsement. The news has surprised many, as Alexandros Metrotis – former presidential candidate in 5730, foreign minister during the first administration of Babis Thanopoulos, and current minister of the Environment and Energy – was considered better positioned to run in a race in which he had previously finished in second place. Some within the party believe that Moraitou plans to position himself as a more radical progressive populist than his predecessor, trying to gather all the progressive vote around his figure. However, due to the fragmented political landscape – as of now, 7 candidates have announced their intention to run, including the incumbent President – analysts are not sure if he could actually improve Metrotis' result last time, while also fearing that his more politically-aligned profile as a member of the government could alienate potential voters who seek in the figure of the President a more independent and neutral role.

[Rogue]

Helios - Decrying President Antonios Lakaridis's veto of the passed Local Forestation and Replantation Act (LFRA) as "borderline authoritarian", KÓK leader Theodóros Kallívas has announced the creation of a new parliamentary alliance called the "Parliamentary Coalition". The new alliance seeks to bind parties that push for parliamentary politics, with Kallívas calling the actions of the president "concerning" and further underlining the benefits a parliamentary system would have. 

The LFRA would have granted local government the right to set replantation policies and would break up the national forest agency in favor of mandatory regional agencies. By doing this, the party of Kallívas argued, that regions could better adapt their forestation policies on local developments and in turn have more freedom in whether they seek to preserve specific forests. By using his veto, the president "has shown his disregard for democracy" and "has further revealed his intend of doing whatever he can to rule by decree, by his own ill will, and by de-facto still working closely together with Phalanx." 

With the creation of the PC, the Centre Party hopes to join forces with likeminded parties ahead of next years presidential election, with  Kallívas calling on PC members to endorse him in the presidential race to prevent vote splitting and pose a challenge against the current coalition. "They pretend they want real competition, but is it really a free and fair contest when the government seeks to do whatever it can to split the vote and prevent non-governmental parties from even entering into a second round? Smaller parties should get together quickly and prevent this authoritarian government from consolidating more power."

Kallívas further emphasized his intend to only serve one term if elected president, as well as renouncing party membership. "The most important thing is that we defeat this government. By any means necessary. A government refusing to recognize local autonomy. A government refusing to protect our economy from foreign interests. And a government seeking to silence its oppossition."

το μεγαλο kók is the party newspaper of the Centre Party

[novarei]

THE SECOND CONGRESS AND THE QUESTION OF REVOLUTION

Dýnamis Confronts Its Own Transformation

As the party gathers for its Second Congress of the Movement, three visions of Ordered Dynamism contend for its soul, and the one man whose judgement might settle the contest has, thus far, declined to give it.

Helios, July 5733. The Second Congress has opened in Helios, two years now since the founding of the party in the summer of 5731, and it is a larger thing than the first by far. The Action Groups have swollen, the polling has hardened, and the movement draws today from quarters it could not have dreamt of claiming two years past: young men who came to it through the gyms, older women who came through the reading circles and the patient social work that grew up around them, and no small number of former socialists who came through its quarrel with inherited privilege. At its founding the party was a movement of physical culture and ideological promise, and little more. What it must now resolve, and resolve under the eyes of the whole assembled movement, is what it intends to make of both at once, of the inheritance handed down by Demetrios, and of the political momentum that has gathered, in these two years, around Nikandros and his reading of that inheritance.

The Congress will form its committees, as such bodies do, on national service, on popular justice, on biological and medical integrity, on family formation, on economic sovereignty, and on the further expansion of the Action Groups. It will hear amendments to the programme and resolutions touching the place of direct action within the movement's strategy. Yet beneath the whole apparatus of agenda and committee there runs a question no podium can answer and no resolution can close, namely, what Ordered Dynamism is in truth, and what, invoking its name, the movement may now permit itself to demand.

THE INHERITANCE: FROM DEMETRIOS TO NIKANDROS

Herakles Demetrios, painter, sculptor, novelist, the Κτίστης whom the movement reveres as its Founder, never set down a political programme, nor sought to. His doctrine was a personal one, concerned wholly with the remaking of the individual through discipline, through physical cultivation, through beauty, and through the deliberate refusal of what he named drift. Passivity, ugliness, irony, comfort, the squandering of youth, the slow and unprotesting swallowing of defeat, these were the enemies he set himself against, and against them he raised up the ascent, the taking-on of form, the refusal of the ordinary. The first work is the self. That sentence became the whole heart of the early movement. The Action Groups he raised in 5681 were gyms and social clubs both, places where the body was held to be the first visible proof of the will, and where reading and painting and exercise were understood not as three pursuits but as a single labour of becoming.

What Demetrios did not ask, and perhaps could not, was why so many were never given the chance to begin that labour at all.
It was Nikandros who took up the question. From 5718 onward, writing through the Demetrios Institution, he issued the essays that would in time recast the whole movement, The Ordered Self, Formation and Rank, Against Private Vanity, The Second Work. The argument of them was that the older doctrine had come to its limit. Self-formation pursued for its own sake, he wrote, decays at last into private vanity, into the cultivation of a beautiful self within a broken world, indifferent to whatever it is that holds all others in their formlessness. And so he named a second work to follow upon the first: the clearing-away of every social force that prevents the self from being formed at all. Inherited wealth, credentialism, patronage, the quiet gatekeeping of the institutions, all of these he held to be anti-formative, the very machinery of drift, imposed from above upon those set below.

This was the door that Nikandros opened. It is a door through which, since, a great many very different men have passed.


THE FIRST TENDENCY: MAVROS AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL RADICALS

Ajax Mavros came to Dýnamis through the Action Groups, through combat sport and physique competition, through long years of building himself up and losing it and building it again. A three-time Demetriad, he reads Ordered Dynamism less for what it states than for what it requires of a man, and what it requires, to his mind, is action, and action without delay.

As Political Secretary and master of the Organizational Bureau, the most formidable of the Secretariats, Mavros holds in his hands the whole field apparatus of the movement, the chain of command that descends from the Central Directorate through the Regional Action Groups to the smallest of the local clubs. Of late he has argued, and with a directness that grows month by month, that the Action Groups can no longer content themselves with being gyms and reading circles merely. They must become instruments of pressure, fit to act in the streets and in the workplaces, in all those rooms into which no parliament has ever set foot. Addressing the Regional Action Group chairs this past month, he returned to the dialectical cadence he had favoured at the founding Congress, the cadence that named the Action Group an engine of formation, an engine of change, and an engine of dynamism:

"The Action Group is not, by its nature, comfortable. It is uncomfortable. And what is uncomfortable in the gym must become uncomfortable in the street, in the office, in the ministry. The state we have inherited is a structure built to preserve an undeserving and accidental elite against the forming, against the very concept of self-struggle and ascent. Challenge is the dialectic by which the person achieves ascent; it is also the dialectic by which the nation achieves it. So we challenge the barrier, and when it stands again, we challenge it again. There is no last barrier, because there is no last man."

He does not, let it be clear, counsel his members merely to train the harder. He counsels them that whatsoever stands between one man and the formation of another must be torn down, and torn down by the collective whole, for to reach the fullness of a life, the greatness of which he holds every man born to be capable, demands action, and at times action for its own sake. He grounds the whole of it, as is his habit, in Demetrios, indeed in the very essay he quoted while bestowing the Demetriad at the founding Congress, You Could Be Brilliant. But You Are a Coward.:

"Pessimism is paralysis. It is not clear sight, but the failure of courage, only thinly masked by intelligence. The men who tell us the barrier cannot be moved have simply mistaken the limits of their own spirit for the limits of the world."

The struggle, as Mavros understands it, does not cease when a barrier falls. It goes on, for the self goes on, and society goes on, and ascent, being what it is, admits of no ceiling. What he offers the recruits arriving now from the socialist left of Kalopia is a condition of permanent forward motion, spontaneous, collective, and forever unfinished.

THE SECOND TENDENCY: LEONTIOS AND THE LONG MARCH

Where Mavros speaks of the street, Diomedes Leontios speaks of the institution. As Secretary-General he keeps the administrative machinery of the Central Council, and where Mavros would tear the barrier to the ground, Leontios would rather outlast it, hollow it out, and fill it again from within with the cadres of the movement itself. He has given the scheme a name, and the name is the Long March.

It is a name aimed, deliberately, at both wings of the quarrel at once. Against the Social Dynamists of Berisha it holds that parliamentary patience is not enough, that a movement may win its elections and pass its laws and leave the deep structure of Kalopian society precisely where it found it. Against the radicals of Mavros it holds that spontaneous action, lacking the capture of institutions, is no more than energy spent for nothing. The Action Groups, as Leontios conceives them, are neither clubs nor instruments of the street, but the very embryo of a new Kalopian civilisation, disciplined cadres who pass into the schools and the civil service, the courts, the professions, the cultural institutions, and there remake them from within, not by the storming of them but by the becoming of them. He set it before the cadre school at North Helios in his own slow and architectural manner:

"A movement which waits for permission to form the nation has already accepted the authority of decay. But a movement which burns the nation down has nothing left to form. We do not storm the institutions of Kalopia. We become them, quietly, completely, until one morning the country wakes and finds that the formed are already inside, already holding the desks, already issuing the orders. The march is slow. The march has a destination."

At the Congress, Leontios and Mavros are looked to stand together against the parliamentary line of Berisha. Yet what each desires beyond that alliance is by no means the same thing. Mavros sees motion without an end. Leontios sees a march that arrives.

THE THIRD TENDENCY: BERISHA AND SOCIAL DYNAMISM

Arben Berisha has been the foremost of the internal critics of the course on which Mavros and Leontios would set the party. His essay made its way among the Congress delegates in the weeks before the summer meeting, and it is already being read aloud in the Action Group reading circles the length of Kalopia. It is an argument raised against a particular radicalism, one which Berisha holds to misread Demetrios, and to mistake altogether what Ordered Dynamism is in truth demanding.

He begins from the same inheritance as the rest. He grants that the conditions of formation are no small matter, that no man pulls himself upward by will alone when the whole of the world about him is built to hold him down. He accepts the second work of Nikandros. What he will not accept is the leap that follows it, the leap that would make of the democratic republic an enemy:

"The people cannot be formed by contempt for the means through which the people speak. We are a movement of ascent. Ascent requires ground to stand on, and that ground is the democratic republic, imperfect, corrupted, insufficient as it is. Is our own life not imperfect? It is in imperfection, as Demetrios taught, that the very act of self-struggle and ascent is to be found."

It is here that Berisha takes up the strangest weapon in the whole of the canon, the obscure late novel of Demetrios, I Know He Is My Father. It is a work scarcely cited in the official literature of the party. The early clubs preferred his writing on physical culture and on ascent, and the later party preferred whatever might be bound neatly to formation and to collective purpose. Berisha has made of it, quietly, the very centre of his case. The novel attends a man caring for a father lost to dementia, a body that has slipped its discipline wholly, incontinent, wandering, no longer able even to know its own son. The line that endures from it is the husband's:
"He does not know that I am his son. I know that he is my father."

This Berisha turns directly upon the radicals. "Demetrios, at the end, did not write of the formed and self-commanding body," he told a regional committee. "He wrote of a body that fails, and of the son who remains bound to it when duty has become ugly. That is the formed man. Not the one who breaks the barrier and marches on, but the one who stays. Any member of our movement that recognises only strength has not read our Founder to his end."

On the socialists now entering the party, Berisha is more careful than his critics had looked for him to be. He does not wish them shut out. Indeed he grants that a great many of them come already formed, possessed of real discipline, real solidarity, the settled habits of an organised life. What he dreads is the theory of change they might carry in together with that energy:

"Dynamism is not revolutionary communism. We do not believe a formed minority can seize the state on behalf of an unformed majority. We are not state revolutionaries; the revolution we mean is the one that happens within the person. The majority must be formed first. That takes patience. It takes faith in the nation and above all faith in the people to engage in self government. Demetrios did not storm anything, he built, he persuaded, he made the Delta visible in the lives of ordinary people until they could not imagine life without it. Let us become beacons for others to follow, and not the foot soldiers of a revolution."

THE CONGRESS AND THE SILENCE OF NIKANDROS

Dýnamis does not recognise organised factions. Its internal discipline is strict, and no tendency is suffered to raise itself into a party within the party. The tendencies are there, for all that.

The Second Congress will resolve none of this in the open. The Congress of the Movement is, among other things, a ritual of unity, a staging-forth of that disciplined collective which Ordered Dynamism professes to be building.

Yet the argument will outlive the week of it. And the man whose answer would weigh heaviest has, even now, withheld it. Hektor Nikandros, the chief ideological founder of the movement, holds himself above the tendencies. He will address the Congress as its senior figure, and will confirm the general line of Ordered Dynamism, and in this there is no surprise. This is the same Nikandros who gives no quarter whatever in the legislative chamber, who names his opponents' half-measures the cowardice of the old politics, who likens a foreign minority stake to the first breach in the hull of a ship, who answers compromise with a flat and contemptuous BAH. And yet, upon the one question that is splitting his own movement, he has said nothing. Nothing of direct action, nothing of parliamentary strategy, nothing of the socialist current even now arriving at the doors. His writings hold passages that each of the three may claim for its own, and each of the three, in its turn, reads his silence with the closest attention.

The Delta points upward. Upon that much the three are agreed. It is on how fast, and by what means, and through whom, that they part.

Faster toward progress. Upward to ascent.

Helios, July 5733

[Aethan]

5734 Presidential elections: Moraitou gives press conference following first round elimination to announce endorsement

The Kalopian Herald — April 5734

HELIOS – After an unexpectedly close three-way race Theseus Moraitou, Second Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and leader of Kalopian Spring, has failed to advance to the second round after his 22.6% was not enough to make it to the runn-off, placing in third place.

Following the announcement of the results, Mr. Moraitou appeared before the press congregated in the Kalopian Spring HQs, eager to know the opinion of the third-placed candidate – and whose endorsement, after winner Kallívas (32%) and second-placed and current President Kalaridis (25%) failed to win in the first round could be decisive.

With a serious expression and surrounded by his closest allies within the party, Mr. Moraitou acknowledged that "they had hoped to win or, at the very least, advance to the second round", but that they had run "the best campaign possible", having won in the Thalassa region and falling just 400,000 votes short of doing the same in Mossavi. He went on to say that tonight's election proved that more than 50% of Kalopia's population "rejects either of the two candidates", and called it a "sad day for Kalopia".

However, what everyone in the room was waiting to know was which option would the Kalopian Spring general secretary choose to endorse, and he decided to give a clear answer about that issue:

"Me, as candidate of Kalopian Spring, will NOT endorse any of the two options advancing to the run-off. Mr. Lakaridis has proved to be – while at times having good initiatives – not fit for the post, especially since his scandal. It would be extremely hypocritical of me to endorse such a candidate after I actively criticized him. People know I am a man of my word, and I must stand by it. That being said, Mr. Kallívas is no better option for our country. He has been open about what does he think about the position of the President – him and his whole party – he has a record of supporting heavy devolution legislation which we are firmly against and our party and his Centre Party have little in common. In fact, we have voted in similar ways only half of the time since they first entered parliament. Apart from that, he's an outspoken critic of the government I'm part of. How could I ever endorse such a figure? There is one thing my supporters appreciate of me above everything else: my honesty and my integrity. And endorsing any of the two final candidates for the Presidency would tear apart both things. It is safe – and sad – to say that, whoever gets elected next month, will not be a proud representative of the Kalopian people. But it is the Kalopian people who have chosen. And for that reason, whilst I will not endorse any of them, I do encourage my supporters and Kalopian Spring supporters to, on election day, go out and vote. Because for us, democracy is sacred. Go out and make your choice, be adults and behave like it. And if you do stay home, a perfect valid reason seeing the two candidates in front of us, you'll also have my support."

However, rumors are that Alexandros Metrotis, former KA presidential candidate and current minister of the government, is actively seeking to move the party towards an endorsement of the current President. Whether he'll be successful or not is yet to be seen.