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Due to the length of the interviews, I have decided to break it into two separate articles. This article will cover Mr. Sphere while the other will cover Garmr. Click here for Garmr!

In a few days, the country presidential debates will be here and the citizens of eNetherlands will have to make their choice on two great but different candidates. This month, there are two candidates running for the post of CP. The first candidate is Garmr of I&W. He served as president before and would like to have another term. The other candidate is Mr. Sphere of the Dutch Patriot Party. While Mr. Sphere never served as CP before, he has great experience in politics. He was the PP of the Geuzen Partij Nederland and now the PP of the DPP.

The purpose of this interview is to offer the reader a greater means to understand the candidates. Manifestos are great but most of them really do not tell us anything new or important about the candidates. While I am not saying manifestos are meaningless, but they most of them states the same thing. No candidate will say they are anti-democracy etc. Therefore, this interview will asked detailed questions to each of the candidates. There will be general questions which both candidates will get the same questions. Then each candidate will get 3 candidate specific questions. Base on the answers they gave in this interview, I am really impressed by the thought and seriousness of these two candidates. Both of them while with differences do offer great understanding in the top and important issues in eNL. Both candidates offered great technical and detailed responses which offers much greater insight to their world views and philosophies.

Note that I am the current PP of I&W. While I try to be as neutral as possible, it should be noted that I am the PP of I&W. This disclosure should avoid any conflict of interest



General Questions (Mr. Sphere)

-Please introduce yourself. How old are you in RL? What do you do? (Student, Job etc) What are your hobbies etc? Please introduce yourself so that the people will get to know you better.

My name is Pieter, I am 32 years old, married, father of a 2 year old son and I have been a working professional for 13 years now. My area of expertise is Credit Management (Debt Collections) and currently I am the Credit Manager at a large transport company managing 7 people responsible for invoicing, debt collection, credit analysis and all administrative tasks to support that. It will not surprise you that eRepublik is high on my list as a hobby but I also enjoy playing online First Person Shooters, watching my favorite doctor series House (gotta love his well known art of sarcasm) and watching a good K1 fight or wrestling match.

-Why do you want to be CP?

eNetherlands has a long history of good Presidents. Unfortunately we also had our share of some bad Presidents. I want to offer eNetherlands at least an alternative in order to give the people the choice who to pick. For me doing such a job is an honor and obligation to ensure that eNetherlands is ruled correctly, with the right attitude, making the right decisions and not messing up for the future. Whether you like it or not the CP function is not to be taken too lightly. The CP is the person in the spotlight and does make the difference between failure or success. I refuse to let eNetherlands fail on this area now.

-How would you describe your political orientation (ie conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, anarchist, etc) and how would your views/ orientation influence your policies and management style if you are elected as CP?

Well as you might know my party the Dutch Patriot Party is a Left Liberal party. And the reason for that is that I believe is 3 spearheads in life, respect, fun and equality. eRepublik is a game and there is nothing more to it. I have noticed too often in the past that people tend to not look further than their own party or even their group of friends. In only exceptional situations I saw people looking broader than that. I refuse to be that narrow minded. Let’s face it. Why are we playing this game? Why do we day in day out continue to click on buttons to increase our strength and try to get eHungarians and ePolish from our lands? There can be only 1 answer, FUN. So what makes a game fun for all? Doesn’t everyone want to be treated with respect? Doesn’t everyone want a chance to prove him/herself? In eRepublik this is not considered a certainty. Some people and some parties even think they are there for only themselves. Well let me let you, as a strong believer in the community of eNetherlands, I am here for the community. I am here to have some fun and I enjoy being part the community of eNetherlands. So this is basically how I will also rule our eCountry. Respect, equality and fun.

Don’t take me wrong, I take being a CP very seriously and can be very assertive with it comes do dealing with matters. I feel that being part of the Government is serious business. The CP and its government have the responsibility to arrange this for the whole of the community. But with the right people at the right places and with the addition of raw gems that are wanting to prove themselves we will make sure eNetherlands will be in good hands.

-Please explain/ describe your philosophy on both domestic and global governance.

Well I tend to go into details of my 3 spearheads mentioned earlier. I will try not to repeat myself too often but also here they are applicable. Respect, equality and fun. Domestic in that sense that we are a solid community and we need to continue doing that. We need to grow and remain strong involving new player in our community. When it comes to global governance, I feel as a small country we have a fighting spirit of a lion but we are lacking scale of hitting power. We are dependant on our allies and friends. Solid relationship management is important and a good and efficiently working MoFA is necessary to maintain contact with our friends and allies. Together we are stronger than the sum of our parts.

-What do you think are your personal strengths and weaknesses? How will you overcome your own personal shortcomings?

Hehe, Konrad, nasty question. My personal strength is probably that I am a RL well established professional. I have dealt with a lot of difficult situations. I have strong communication and negotiation skills. I know and understand people, where they are coming from, what they might be thinking and am able to anticipate on that. I am a peoples person. I love working with people and that is why eRepublik is so appealing to me. Now here is my kryptonite, despite the fact that I am respectful I tend to be impatient from time to time. I will be honest about that. But as people get older they tend to be able to better cope with such impatient as I have done. Patience is a virtue, that I have learnt but sometime, just sometimes I can not resist to try and push something forward without real reason to do so. So sue me, nobody can be perfect XD.

-What is the one issue that you think is the most urgent that eNL should tackle in the coming month? Why?

Things have been going quite well this term and I am very happy with the current government in place. One of the key programs I had in mind is further fine tuning our defence force. We have noticed that with the last war against the eHungarians the supplies we not done efficiently. This was a bit of a sensitive matter. Supplies are an important part of our striking capability. All wars are won on logistics, if our distribution of supplies is not sufficient enough we might have problems providing our friends and allies with the means to support us in recovering our lands. Now setting this up to ensure a steady flow of suppliers will be difficult but not impossible. We will need to get this on track if we want to regain our regions.

-What would you do to liberate the rest of eNL?

I would give an e-arm or leg if that would help regain our regions if I would know that would help. I am not willing to sacrifice other people but I am willing to go far in this. eDutch can be quite stubborn people, we do not like being told what to do and we surely do not like to be occupied. This land rightfully belongs to us and we need it back. Keeping our friends close and paying them with respect and support in return we are able to think about planning a liberation and as I said before I am willing to go far to get our lands back. I do however have a problem with buying back our land but if Congress (or better yet the people of eNetherlands) want me to do so, I will of course put aside my personal opinions and do anything in my power to realise that.

-Please describe your policies and relations with eBelgium?

eBelgium has a lot of good and strong players. Some are very respectful to us. Others less for apparent and some for non apparent reasons. Nevertheless eBelgium is a RL ally and although ingame we are not really considered to be an ally I feel that being a neighbour we might not always love our neighbours we still need to respect them. We have a long history together and that goes a long way for me. As long as the respect is mutual I am open to continue working with eBelgium and would gladly cooperate with them. While writing this answer I noticed that Belgium is proposing eNetherlands as Natural Enemy. I am confident that their Congress will not go this far. Apparently some eBelgium people do not support my idea but that is a burden of politics I suppose. I will continue to strengthen the bond we have with eBelgium and if they decide to declare war on us I will take appropriate actions. I need to add however that you cannot judge a country solely on decisions of their Congress. And lets be fair, we have not been that nice to them in the past either.

-How much time on average per day will you commit to eRep if you are elected?

A lot, 5 to 6 hours a day. I try to not overdo this but it feels naturally. And that does not include checking out forum during working hours. Am I an eRepublik addict? You tell me 🙂

-What are you going to do about the lack of active players in the eNetherlands? What will the candidates do about the lack of good tutorials, communication and effort to contribute by helping new players?

You tend to ask the right questions and I feel I am writing a book about politics so excuse my long answers but I feel I need to give you the full picture on everything when possible. New players are important for eNetherlands. We need a steady flow of new players to ensure we have enough players to actually play this game decently. People come and go. They become inactive, become active again, some stay away forever and some stick for years. To keep the game fun we need this continuous flow of people. Therefore I want to spend as much time on getting new players involved in our community as possible.

Candidate Specific Questions (Mr. Sphere)

-In terms of CP experience, you are behind Garmr as you never served as CP before, what skills or experience do you have that allows you to be a great CP candidate?

Konrad, I am not here to brag about my skills and experience. I have no CP experience but most people know me from my political career and being part of the government in multiple occassions. I could provide a list of all functions I have done in the past but I do not want people to choose for me just because of my past experiences. I stand for a vision, a future, building for a better tomorrow. I want people to vote my program, my ideas and what I stand for. Maybe Garmr has more CP experience than me but lets be fair, that says nothing about how well he will perform in the future nor if I would perform badly. Let’s face it, and that is what I have been trying to tell eNetherlands the last period, we need to invest in the future and give people a chance. Knowing who I am I ask the eDutch voters to have faith and vote for a CP that stands for something they believe in too. And if that means the people's vote goes to Garmr then so be it, I will accept this and wish him and eNetherlands the best of luck. I am more confident than ever of my skills and experience otherwise I would not have ran for Country President.

-In your manifesto, you stated “Fun is not only in fighting. Fun is part of all players! eNetherlands is a country very much focussed on community. Our community is important to me. Our current government published articles and increased the participation of IRC and with that contributed greatly by involving new players to our community. This is the path we need to stick to.” What kind of articles will you publish and what are your plans to make eNL more “fun” without relying solely on war?

I do not intend to publish humorous articles. My comments refers to having more people involved in the community because togetherness adds pleasure to a community. Being able to talk to friends, being part of something bigger and being recognized as a unique individual is important to people. Stimulating people to participate in our community will add to this. I have to admit I always have a blast on IRC with all kinds of people. We talk about politics, wars, nonsense but we enjoy the time we spend together. The forum of eNetherlands is a more formal communication channel but there are a lot of ways to interact with people there on serious matter and “spam” related matter. Focussing on generating articles and directly approaching new players will help getting them involved in the community. The way the government has done this so far is good. You can debat on how successful the individual projects were but that is not to blame anyone. MoRC and MoEC have done a great job thinking outside the box and being different to stimulate people to actively join our community and I intend to continue building on that.

-In your manifesto, you also stated the need for respect. What kind of policies or initiative would you enact to promote more/ or enforce existing respect levels?

As a person I do not tolerate disrespect. I expect my party members to respect all and that they treat other as they want to be treated. I will expect the same from my Government and Congress. I believe that getting respect starts by showing respect and that is what I have done so far. As Country President I am in the spotlight constantly. I will need to lead by example and I hope people are expecting that from me as well. I will not work with people that lack respect, I will not cooperate with people who lack respect. If we start tolerating disrespect we will create a negative environment for ourselves and this will definitely not add fun to the game. Don’t take this the wrong way, showing respect does not mean you cannot argue about a matter. Just make sure you are not making this personal and make sure you use arguments to strengthen your case, not lies, trolling or abuse.


Fun Questions (Mr. Sphere)

-German, Belgian, or Dutch beer?
Beer? Are you insane! Only girls drink beer! I rather have a nice single malt scotch whiskey or a good Limoncello for that matter.

-What is your favorite football club?
Soccer? Come on, only girls play socces! WRESTLING BABY! Now that is a sport for real men XD

-Star Wars or Star Trek?
May the Force be with you.

-Porsche or Ferrari?
Porsche 356 roadster, it doesn’t matter how old it is, it has character and it was build with vision back then, it reminds me of someone 🙂

-Why are gay guys the best?
You know I am a homofoob right? Would you please stop winking at me? Is that your hand on my knee?!?!?! KONRAD!!! 😉

For the record, there is nothing wrong with gay guys (as long as they don’t start kissing in public 😃 )

-Many thanks for your time and I wish you luck. Is there anything you want to say or address to the reader about yourself or your campaign?

Yes, well first of all thank you for this opportunity to elaborately allowing me to go into detail of my program. During a campaign it is difficult to show the full picture but these kinds of interviews help a lot. It shows you not only the program but also the person behind the CP candidacy. Furthermore I love talking and thinking about politics and making eNetherlands a better place so I really enjoyed this interview as well. So if someone actually read the whole interview I salute you, YOU dear reader are hardcore and you understand the important of good politics in eNetherlands. I went into politics for you! o7

The 5th is a time to vote and for that I wish all voters good luck and wisdom in making a decision who to vote for. It will probably not be an easy choice.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish the best of luck to Garmr as well in his candidacy. Garmr, good luck mate. Make the best of it and be a worthy opponent, eNetherlands only deserves the best 🙂

Thanks for the interview Konard, good luck with your newspaper. I know I always enjoy reading it.

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Many thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed as well as to better know the candidates. Remember to vote on the 5th and have fun.