Vascania

[Pragma]

25 years of promises - how Vascania's democratic dreams faded
10 February 5713

25 years since the announcement of a return to multi-party liberal democracy in Vascania, few people would say they retain much optimism about the direction of their nation. Unemployment is high, voter turnout remains low, and increasingly radical visions of the future are being offered as the population prepares to head to the polls for this year's national election.

Vascania was once a powerful nation, the largest and richest of the 'eastern third' nations that were the last to be decolonised. Its wars of unification sparked centuries of rapid growth in living standards and internationally prestige. Its titanic oil supplies were the fuel of the global economy. It could wage war with international superpowers like Deltaria, and many considered it the regional power of the global south-east alongside Yingdala. All of this has faded, and in its place the country is a shadow of its former self.

Industry persists, but poor infrastructure and a lack of internal stability has led to a massive reduction in international investment or interest in trade. Many former industrial areas have lost their trade union networks to suppression during previous authoritarian regimes, while the plants that once empowered the nation to new economic heights are now rusting at best and more likely dilapidated. All industry provides now is pollution and meagre wages to an angry population. Only a small number of cities along the Rajuttistani coast and Kayal Island remain largely safe and prosperous.

Amid the national depression, the current government is deeply unpopular. Called the 'blue coalition', it is a coalition of the liberal All-Vascanian League and the conservative Vascanian National Party. Their respective support has fell to the point they are likely to run a join list to avoid decimation under Vascania's unforgiving first-past-the-post system. Its opponents come in three major coalitions. The current Prime Minister is Srijan Patvardhan, who came to prominence as a hopeful figure but looks increasingly unsteady and out-of-touch as his term continues.

The first is Vascanian Resurgence, ultranationalist force that views the reversion to liberal democracy as a mistake. It seeks to empower the military and the royal court. Its key policies include a massive national service program and the reconstruction of Vascania's navy and air force through cuts to almost everything else in the national budget - besides subsidies to religious institutions. Aakesh Kunder leads the alliance, a northern figure who has provided a professional, younger sheen to some very old and controversial beliefs.

It is diametrically opposed by the far-left Workers' Front, who oppose militarism and royalism and seek to reindustrialise Vascania under a program of radical wealth transference and co-operative control of the economy. Its supporters have clashed with those of Vascanian Resurgence in several extreme ugly incidents. It is led by the most prominent woman of Vascanian contemporary politics, Indira Mahalanabis, who was arrested and convicted under the previous regime for assaulting a police officer during a protest. She lost sight in one eye as a result of a beating by guards that generated international headlines.

The last major pole of Vascania's reshaped politics is the centre-left New Vascania, who criticise the inefficacy of the blue coalition but also consider the more radical parties to be dangerous and counterproductive. They seek to encourage international investment which spending large amounts of borrowed money on infrastructure development as a form of fiscal expansion. While the current government has attacked their plans as reckless, New Vascania argues that there is too little currency circulating in the Vascanian economy to generate a recovery - and that a bolder budget is needed to return to prosperity. It is led by the charismatic and youthful Zalim Navathe from Rajuttistan, who has used social media to rally younger voters to his cause.

Polls are all over the place, as is common in Vascanian elections, but international observers worry that the far-left and far-right will engage in violence regardless of the result and that turnout will be low. If a more radical party enters governance, Vascania's future trajectory could alter massively, but it is unlikely that either Kunder or Mahalanabis would be accepted as a Prime Minister by at least half of their fellow countrymen.

The Kamalata Times is a Vascanian daily national newspaper based in Kamalata