The dirtiest war of them all
AnBasement
I would first like to say that I in this article wish no harm to Binary Party or any of the politicians in said party, and if you feel that what will be written in this article is unfair in any way, then I apologize.
I recently read Eha Pappkriger's article with thoughts on the upcoming election. Eha Pappkriger is the Binary Party's candidate this coming election, in case you did not know. Anyway, he wrote an article, an article that I will not call an Election Speech, as it does not really focus on why Binary Party is the better choice, or why Eha is the right man to lead eNorway at this time. Rather it's focusing on why Binary party is so much better than Teknokratene, and how pathetic and self-preserving my party is.
A political take-over
A lot of us older users have been around for so long that we've seen eNorway gone through multiple PTO's, some not too bad, others with a horrible result. I think the one we remember the most is the Hungarian take-over, that ended in the loss of all the Russian regions, all the assets we had gathered in the state account, and ultimately, almost an annihilation of our great eCountry. Us Norwegians saw what might have happened, but through the fighting spirit in all of our hearts and help from our allies, we managed not only to survive the Russian threat, but even a new threat that sprung up in the west, as Great Britain decided they wanted to take a shot at us. They failed.
The message I'm trying to convey to you all is that us Teknokrater are worried for a reason. This is why we went to Binary Party with the proposition of a joint effort to fight the political take-over, a proposition that was ultimately turned down because they found our demands unreasonable. Fair enough, they didn't go in Eha's favor as we decided that we couldn't support him, but we decided not to speak of it, because we want to keep the smearing to a minimum. What I want now is to clarify what happened in the meeting, a meeting I did not take part in.
A BP/TeK coalition
The decision of having a contract signed was something that was decided in our chat on Quakenet IRC. We realized that it would be the best way to fend off a possible PTO, and that we should at least try to work with BP this term, even with all the bad blood between our two parties.
We came up with an agreement we were satisfied with, and that included a list of acceptable candidates for Presidency, that we knew could put our differences aside and do what was best for Norway. I will not release that list onto here, but I will say that Eha's name was not on that list. On beforehand, Binary Party had announced that they would not support any TeK candidates, and we had accepted this. Their reasons for this decision were that they were the bigger party, with more people in congress and more active players. A reason that I can understand, but do not agree with.
Why fear a PTO?
It's true, we do have the majority in congress combined, and there's not much a President could do. Except for attacking Russia and the United Kingdom through open wars that we really need to shut. This would put us in a very dangerous position, and even though we could impeach the President after a 24 hour vote, the President can attack any region he wants as long as the war is open, without going through a democratic process. To make it worse, it seems that the new Russian President wouldn't hesitate in attacking the defenseless Norway to the south. This is why we are worried. This is why we wanted to work with BP.
TeK = Egotistical dictators?
What annoyed me the most in the article was how much focus Eha put on calling TeK goons, saying we wanted everything our way, wanted to dictate other parties. I ask you, how is proposing an agreement that ultimately favors the opposition rather than ourselves more dictating what they do?
In reality, the TeK diplomats that took part in the meeting to decide if the two parties should run together, never really said that we refused to support Eha. We would accept it, but would prefer seeing a different candidate from their party. We only had one clause, and that was that BP would sign the contract we had offered them, making sure that a TeK candidate would be prioritized in the unlikely event of a future PTO. While this seemed okay at first, it ended up with BP not signing the contract, and instead telling TeK that we could go along with what they want. Note, they did not say we should or had to go with their candidate, they merely said that we could, not dictating us in that exact case.
As BP refused to cooperate with us, based on the facts that they have more active members and more members in congress, we decided to run separately, with reboot as a candidate. This was not because we didn't want to support Eha, we did it because we don't want to let Binary Party walk all over us and dictate what we do.
We, TeK, have been accused of things before. Spreading false propaganda, indoctrinating newer users, lying to cover ourselves. And now we can add being against democracy to that list. Democracy. One of, if not THE most important case to our party. We acknowledge the people. We want what the people want. We would never dream of taking the right to decide their own lives from our citizens. We want to protect them, and we believe that by working against a PTO with BP, we could do this. But we are not naive. If there's anything this month taught us, it's that bad blood between parties can ruin a country. And even though we can work alongside BP, we want to make sure that we can rise again on a later occasion. That is why we could not simply go with BP's plan.
I would also like to point out one little thing that Evleos made me aware of. Binary Party says that TeK wants to dictate what BP should do and who the people should vote for, for not saying we didn't want to support Eha (which we by the way did not do, if you read the above writing), and thus not allowing the negotiations to go on (even though this also is wrong, I won't mind that now). Then tell me, how is it not dictating TeK when BP says that Eha must be their candidate, no matter what, and thus ending negotiations all the same? Why is that TeK can be labeled as dictators when BP does exactly the same thing? Ask yourself this.
PTO or not PTO?
I personally believe that the PTO will not happen. That does not, however, mean that I'm not going to prepare for it. Did you know, by the way, that the three congressmen from the Justice and Development Party didn't get into congress in that party? seko38, their candidate for Presidency, BuyRock and sip3r all ran under Teknokratene during the congress election? They swapped parties right after this. I'm aware that this might seem suspicious. Make it look like TeK can't handle their own members. Truth is, we'd never seen these people before, and due to the game mechanics, we couldn't deny them the right to run for congress. We just had to sit and watch.
Vote Teknokratene
This is no election speech. This is an article telling you why you must not believe everything Eha has written in his article about Teknokratene. The words he has written about himself and Binary Party, are not lies. These are his opinions and the party he represents, and should be taken seriously. What he's said about Teknokratene is not necessarily a lie, but perhaps a misconception. The truth, I believe, is right here.
Vote for reboot on Tuesday. It's the right choice.
Comments
Finally a serious article from Tek, thanks for that. 🙂
I'd just like to add from our point of view, the contract part wasn't possible since we wouldn't know who's members or even who's running Binary Party in 3 months, 6 months, or even less a year which was suggested as the validity of the contract. For those reasons, I doubt that admins would find the contract valid. And if they don't, there's not really any reason to have one.
Apart from that, it would be just wrong for us to decide what future BP members HAVE to do.
sad that not even a possible PTO can unite us, sad but true. voted, good article Kristoffer. A contract do not have to be validated by the admins cirno, as long as both sides keep their promises.
A written contract is a written contract, if the future leaders of BP (and TeK) had any self-respect, it would be valid, and the contract would only do good for BP. I sort of understand your argument, but it doesn't satisfy me, and I don't think it's valid for not going through with the contract. Yes, it would be deciding what future BPers would do, but it would be in the unlikely event of a future PTO. It's not an unreasonable clause.
Like I said, we can't tell who's in BP in 3 months, and who's in charge of BP, so it would just be wrong of us to sign something that forces them to support Tek.
Previous reply was for bjelland.
The same goes for KAG, but in addition I'd like to point out that a such contract could make Tek members hope for a new PTO threat, and personally I don't feel that's ideal either.
There's really no need to discuss whether im right or wrong, the negotiations have ended, and I just wanted to you know some of my reasoning.
Oh believe me, we don't need a PTO to win presidency 😉
I appreciate you offering some of your opinions, thanks!
Like us, I assume you don't know what political situation you might be in, in 3+ months time.
Either way, I just wanted to say I appreciated a serious article like this. It's a nice change, and hopefully the first step towards the good old days.
well spoken KristofferAG! nice to see an accurate description of the negotiations, instead of misinformed ones.
Cirno, don't let your imagination be limited when it comes to writing contracts. TeK, who initially had the idea of working together with a BP candidate, offered additional failsafes to improve the contract's conditions to guarantee it would only take effect if key members were still active players and/or if other conditions were met, so it would be void if our political situation was drastically different for either party. If the future is so uncertain as you say it is, then the contract would have been voided and no TeK candidate would ever be supported, and we'd still be backing BP this election. Your gain.
As a fellow programmer you should know that if-then statements are only limited by the writer's imagination and technical limitations. In eRep the technical limitations of a program-similar contract are bypassed by actual free-thinking humans (called admins), and they can enforce anything wired to their servers.
Your desire to put party before country without critically thinking, yet again, is one major reason I decided not to vote for you or your followers (as famously misquoted). I pity the Norwegians that have to endure another PTO attempt if BP ever shows similar misbehavior to this and the previous months.
It's also a shame that TeK, who has voluntarily worked by your side, Cirno, would be accused of wanting a PTO so that it could gain political power when we have done nothing but try to prevent it at great cost to our party in order to save Norway.
Great article, KAG.
Voted HARD!
Oh yeah! I like it when you do it HARD and ROUGH, you hugtreeing hippie!
Isn't such a contract a HUGE fail for the democracy if ever implemented?
TT would actually propose election-fraud? To laugh at a free persons voice? To decide who is going to be the president not only before, but WAY before an election, is nothing but leading up to despotism in a free country.
There is clearly some misunderstanding about what it means for one party to support the other one. How can we control citizen votes? If TeK backed Eha ALL citizens would still have had to vote for Eha or Seko. This is basic game mechanics. Who told you it was undemocratic for one party to support the other? Are you aware this happens all over the real world on a frequent basis including in-game? A contract can't guarantee citizen votes, and TeK would be the absolute LAST party to control the open democracy we promote and encourage. Please learn more about contracts by consulting the eRep official wiki. I don't mean to chastize you, but please put some more effort into understanding this system from the game's manual itself instead of BP's channel on IRC.
Nice skills, you've clicked my name and seen that I'm a member of BP?
For one, I am not on IRC. Why do you imply that just because I am a member of BP, that I am also bending over to things they say?
That I am their slave, that I don't have a free will? Don't have my own thoughts and meanings? Please do try to put some more effort yourself, into understanding that there are other persons within eNorway than those running a party.
I'm simply member of BP because it's closest to what I stand for - for the same reason as when I vote in RL. I don't vote for a party because I believe in everything they say, but because I believe they are the one who I agree most with.
If I can't vote on the canidate I feel will do the best job as a President due to some silly agreement that he ain't allowed to run for elections because TT supported BP on an earlier occasion, then yeah - of course it feels undemocratic.
What would be more normal is that TT perhaps get some influence in the politics due to them supporting the biggest party and their canidate (this happens), but no way in hell that they should get the president due to some agreement. You tricked your way into the last presidency, now leave the next to a fair game.
In the case of a PTO, one should rather think of actually securing the country, rather than what party you agree with the most. You have no idea how much it took for TeK to even consider PROPOSING this with BP, because we know our two parties are so unlike.
I'm sure what Stassi meant with "...put some more effort into understanding this system from the game's manual itself instead of BP's channel on IRC." was that you should check the game mechanics before assuming and questioning. For all I know, you might already know a lot. I see you're an old player that has returned, welcome, it's always nice to see some old blood!
I Voted!
I'm quite aware of the political situation in eNorway, and I know the risks of PTO's - however, I'm against such agreements that was proposed. In my opinion, the weaker party should support the bigger party in these circumstances, if any. If it so happened 3 months from now that TT was bigger than BP, then it would be logical for BP to support TT.
BUT, and this is my point exactly - not by a contracted agreement many months ahead when we don't know the political situation in the future - it should always be decided by the majority of the people.
I started playing as one of the first in eNorway, co-founded Gullpartiet and was a congressman way before they implemented medals for such things. I've been playing regularly for over a year now, after I had a 6-month break or so - and I've been monitoring both the political as well as the military situation for a long time - so I'm not totally clueless 😉
I thank you for your re-welcome, and I hope for a fair game 🙂
Avtrekkeren, I actually did not check to see if you were a BP member because I was browsing the site on my cell phone at the time (which means loading pages takes way too long, and all I wanted to do was comment).
"You tricked your way into the last presidency, now leave the next to a fair game."
This is a statement only a home-grown member of BP would believe. The reason I correctly guessed your political affiliation without looking is because I can detect the difference between someone who is inherently uninformed and someone who is intentionally misinformed. This is thanks to an entire month of unprovoked attacks from BP against the democratically-elected Norwegian government.
If you can't tell the difference between a "trick" or representative democracy, I would say that six month break has done no justice to your understanding of politics. Even though what you said is incredibly offensive to someone who has worked diligently for this great country against all odds, like president Eris Caelestis, I am hoping you will walk away with a renewed sense of purpose and start cross-referencing your source of information.
Noen som har mista fullstendig bakkekontakt her? Synes Eris har gjort den tilfredstillende jobb, tatt i betraktning at hun sikkert måtte gjøre veldig mye på egen hånd. Fint hvis TeK klarer å få på banen flere aktive spillere som hun kan delegere ansvar til. Der har BP tydeligvis mer å fare med.
Synes forresten hele den teite kontrakt-ideen var et dødfødt forslag, og var vel den første som kommenterte det i BP's forum. At ikke andre kan se det, det får stå for deres regning.
Nå må folk få opp øynene å se forskjell på faktiske forhold og åpenbar overdreven virkelighetsbeskrivelse. Evt så kan man legge den ballen død, og tenke litt fremover. PTO blir det ihvertfall ikke i Januar.
I should have guessed that you didn't check. If you always answer just by assuming, then I understand why you never seem to make any sense. 😉
Again, proving your poor and abysal research by saying I'm a home-grown member of BP? I am not, I joined BP some time after the last resistance war - way after they regrouped from the old Gullpartiet / Golden party - which is not the same as I co-founded back in december 2007 😉
Coming with false accusations claiming a break I had from march-september 2008 (more than a year ago) makes me unfit for political discussions, when in fact I've been active twice as long as you have - even after my 6 months break. Clearly again you didn't read the part that it was more than a year ago. Which is no surprise to me. 😉
What you say is nothing but empty words with no meaning to them, just as all your other empty comments and so-called "references" that you pull out of context. Maybe you should try some real arguments based on the difference between the political views, rather than failing on attacking persons 😉
Aaaand maybe we should all shut up. You know, it'd all be so easier. Let's just watch the polls, all right?
Yes, yes, I know he started it. It's okay. Be the bigger man. Come on you guize. Stop the fighting.