Join the new world

Ambassadorial report: Life in Finland

Citizens of eUK. With similar words have many of the RL Finnish presidents began their speeches to the nation. As your representative to the people of eFinland I feel it is my duty to report back what I have learned during my ambassadorial term. Is this not what ambassadors are for? To spread information amongst nations and to increase understanding on foreign ways? I shall begin my report by outlining the brief history of eFinland.


1. History of eFinland

Finland began as a small nation as did every other nation too. Unfortunately the Norwegians were more numerous than Finns in the beginning, so they decided to annex Finland in a move made to dominate the entire north-east of Europe. On 21st April 2008, Finland was conquered by Norway. Shortly after Norway annexed Russia too which made Norway geographically the largest eNation in the eWorld.

A factor Norwegians didn't expect was the patriotism of Finns. After being conquered, the Finns began a large advertising campaign on several Finnish forums and managed to get nearly 2 000 new citizens to the game. A new party called 'Sovereign Finland' was formed in Norway and at it's height it had approximately 1500 members. After the next elections Sovereign Finland ruled Norwegian congress and it also placed a Finnish president in power. Although the country was called Norway, there was no doubt who actually ran the country.

After wars were unbanned, the Finns began a resistance war in Eastern Finland. The war was followed world-wide as it was the first successful independence war in the New World. This began a series of other resistance wars and on December 6th, the last of the Finnish regions was finally free. The date was planned beforehand, as it is also the real life Finnish independence day.

Unfortunately the wars marked mass exodus of Finnish people from eRepublik. Many had signed in for simply freeing Finland from Norwegians and after that was done, they lost the will to play and quit. The activity rate of Finland has been declining ever since and nowadays approximately 300 people even bother to vote in elections.

Recently the Finnish infrastructure has improved a lot since the early days of independence. Finland has sent ambassadors to several countries and according to their president, Erwin Schaumann, the Finnish public relations have never been better. On January 2009 Finland decided to join ATLANTIS and they have been members and allies to eUK ever since.


2. The government

In Finland the government consist of congress, ministers and the president. When a law is proposed, the congress debates it and decides to either pass it or not. The president has the traditional role of steering the country and handling public relations. Different to eUK, Finland has no Minister of Foreign Affairs, the president fulfills his/her role. The ministers (MoIA, MoPR, MoD, MoF and Ambassador to ATLANTIS) act in similar roles as their eUK counterparts. To promote activity in Finland the Finns nominated the Minister of Lulz (MoL) who creates competitions and fun activities. The MoPR is mainly a domestic office and his/her role is to inform the nation about government's decisions and recent events in the world.

The parties in Finland are (sorted by size):
Liberaali Edistyspuolue (LEP) (eng. Liberal advancement party)
Isänmaallinen kansallispuolue (IKP) (Patriotic National Party)
Sininen puolue (SP) (Blue Party)
Suomen Sosialistinen Puolue (SSP) (Finnish Sosialistic Party)
Red Jihad

The LEP holds most congress seats and according to Finns rules the congress.


3. The military

Finland began organizing it's military during independence wars and formed a basic reserve structure with squad leaders and squads. The MoD's function is to create a budjet proposal to congress, which in turn funds the military based on MoD's proposal. The Finnish military organization is relatively the largest in the eWorld, 25% of the Finns are in the military. This may have some correlation to real life as Finland is one of the few worlds in the world with mandatory military service.

To create a spear head for foreign missions, the Finnish military formed the Finnish Rapid Deployment Force (in Finnish NTJ, acronym from Nopean Toiminnan Joukot) similar to our paras. It has participated in several conflicts worldwide and continues to fight alongside our paras and protect the interests of it's allies.

4. Economy

The Finland has the world's cheapest products during peace time. To protect their domestic economy, Finland has followed the example of other nations and created high import taxes to most products. Their GDP is currently 105 Gold, whereas the UK's GDP is 196 Gold. The average salary in Finland is 3.91 FIM (= 0.08 Gold = 2.9 GBP).


5. The Future

Currently Finland's future seems uncertain. The Finnish infrastructure is rather stable, but the decline in population shows. There have been some campaigns to advertise eRepublik in several Finnish forums but only time will tell if they are successful.

Yours,
Ltn. avec, paratrooper platoon D leader
eUK's ambassador to eFinland and eSweden

Coming next: A report on Sweden.