Join the new world

Dear citizens and other readers,

I apologize for my lowered activity the last couple of days. There have been some personal problems in my life and without going into much detail it's fair to say it took up a lot of my time. Nevertheless do not be worried, as the usual day-to-day work continued and will do so until the soon-to-be end of the term.

Let me just first say that I do not intend to run again as Country President. For the reason aforementioned, but also because I believe three months has been more than enough to 'make my point' in re-energizing the eNetherlands. And I'm proud to say there have been great steps taken (but obviously some failures as well). I believe the last months have established a sound foundation for coming Presidents and I hope that the progress will not be lost in status-quo thinking again.

The Good
Together with Minister of Finances eRepTrader the financial system of our country has been upgraded a bit. Large sums of money are saved up and partly used for our Defence tasks, instead of it all just gathering dust in state accounts. It offers flexibility to our country and also makes people feel like they pay taxes for a reason.

This also ties in with our Defence ministry in general. With money to work with more weapons are available to our citizens during important matters and money is available for Combat Orders in case of emergency (or regulating our TW with small sums). We did a trial on introducing supplies on a regular basis again, although that hasn't resulted in a more permanent system yet (bad, I acknowledge, but I hope the data provided during that trial will make it happen in the future nevertheless). Thinking about improving our defence capabilities also forced us to approach our Commune Holders again. Working in the communes is a viable proposition it seems, but for now we at least have a deal with the commune holders to supply us with a steady stream of weapons each month. On a lost note the Monetary Market program has been restarted again. While not running on a 100% steam yet, the accounts have been reorganized and already some small profits have been made!

All this cumulated in our victory in the recent Orion Games, in which the eNetherlands was ranked #1 and earned 100,000cc (which was given to you!). Other minor reforms like the replacement of the DAF Command Team have also occurred and probably some other things as well, but I do not intend to make this a wall of text. Something else that I value about the last months is the reformist thoughts openly pronounced in our country. The old forum is being broken open by thoughtful individuals, breaking the old (and unrepresented) power of balance in our country. WillemTheConqueror and some others are working on rewriting the law with some of these thoughts in cooperated. On the forum there are even calls to allow Congressional Votes to happen in-game! What a change compared to years before.

The Bad
Some things have not been successful. Many of my plans were only on an ad-hoc basis (Monetary Market, Monthly CO Fund, Supplies Trial) and it will require people in coming months to uphold these things, or else all is lost again. I feel bad about that, but as some have said to me: If only one thing changes a month in this country, it's a good term. And plenty has changed in our country.

The big issue that sores though is the number of our population. Many things have been tried to increase it, but it seems to be all in vain. Or perhaps it only stabilized it for now (which is good!) - although we've recently seen some interesting old/new players join our country that seem promising. It was perhaps too ambitious to have the pretension to change anything about that, but even stabilization is better than it decreasing even more.

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As I shortly reconsider the last few months I'm left with much more to say and ponder over, but that has no purpose. What is important is that not necessarily progressive actions have been taken, but that a progressive thought has taken hold of our country. It's now up to others to take the wheel in that direction!