Fhaemita's Presidential Manifest

Day 1,320, 16:45 • Published in Belgium Netherlands • by Fhaemita The Apostate

Music While you read




Salut Belgium Citizens,

Like I already announced in my previous article I will be running for country this month july 2011. It had not planned to run for country president of eBelgium this soon as I've only been a citizen for four months. Before this four months I was South African ambassador to eBelgium for almost a year. Also I was very active on irc friend of Belgium and friends of congress and had as much access to the forum as any citizen had and fully aware of what was going on in your country long before I was a citizen.

Let me start for the people who do not know me to introduce myself, I was born in eNetherlands in October 2009, I lived there only for not so long and moved around till I got to South Africa in December 2009 and got citizenship there fairly quickly. I stayed there for over a year and held almost all possible minister position including Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and also Party President for New Africa party for six terms, vice president for 2 terms and resistance president during the PTO. In March 2011 I moved to Belgium for a new challenge and have held in these four months the positions of minister of Home Affairs for 2 terms and Minister of Foreign Affairs for 2 terms. Besides my political position I have also been in different armies and militias and have held the rank of Major when I was Executive Officer of Training Division of the eSouth African armed forces. Currently I am part of the Ultramarines, an eUS based millitia.

Originally it was the plan for my party the United Left Alliance to support Jofroi but he decided to back out of the race for country president due to the lack of time. I had not planned to run so soon and waa hoping to be able to run in a couple of months but now I am given the opportunity to run as country president of eBelgium I am honoured and humbled that I was given the chance. will do the utmost of by ability to keep the country and the people safe and do what is needed for the betterment of our country.

Stances

Home Affairs

Social
“A modern health and social care system has to be completely focused on the needs of its users.” - Patricia Hewitt

The social aspect of the game is an important one, playing the game and pushing the button to work, train and fight are just a small part of the game. The social aspect of the game the contact with people who all over the globe and making friends with new people. The forum and irc are great tools in this social aspect of the game and we should encourage, encourage more citizen participation and more people to come to the forum and on irc .

Getting a babyboom seems a goal that is not reachable and I know that many presidents and candidates all over the world talk about getting a babyboom and never achieve this. I will not promise a babyboom but we do have to make en effort to attract more people from both inside but mostly outside the game. A good way of advertising online is using new media like facebook, twitter, youtube and that kind of sites and also advertise on big Belgium forums and make people aware of Erepublik. We should not limit us to only online ways but also see if we can real life media to pay attention to Erepublik.


Education & Mentorship
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.” - Abigail Adams

Like I said in my previous paragraph we need to recruit new people but if we attract people we also need to keep the players and make sure they won’t die. player retention is a difficult thing, in every game or website a lot of people register and 90% of them will never log in again or will die within a month. It is very hard to really retain a lot of those people because people might register and not like the game, get bored by it or just forget about it. A important part of keeping players is to education them and to mentor them. Elynea has been doing a great job with educating and mentoring all the new users and also giving them in the Belgium Training Academy. The Belgium Training Academy should be supported in any way possible by money or other way that they need support.


Immigration
“I'm in favor of immigration but we also need rules.” - Gary Ackerman

Belgium is a small country, inhabit by people from many countries that speak many languages. All these different cultures and languages enrich our country and makes our bi-cultural society only makes us stronger. On the other side eBelgium is a small country with not a lot of citizens and and that makes the immigration question in a difficult one.We should not be scared for foreigners or become a xenophobic but we do have to be vigilant when accepting people and do a thorough back ground check on persons when they arrive in our country. With such a small country like ours the chances of a political takeover are bigger then in larger country and giving citizenship to one wrong person could be disastrous. That being said, we should keep doing what we have been doing and accept people who are active and willing to participate in our society. We do need to try to get people to come to eBelgium and welcome them in our plural society and make them feel welcome en keep our society diverse.

Wiki

The wiki has always been a good source of information on many erepublik related subjects but also is an information source that has been out of date a lot of the time. The wiki has the potential to be a important information source provided that it is up to date that is why I am going to point a state secretary under the minister of home affairs for wiki. His sole duty will be updating the wiki and also keeping the wiki up to date.

Defense
“Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made.” - Horatio Nelson

There has been a lot of discussion and proposals in congress about the Belgian Armed Forces. Some of the proposals even said how the Belgian Armed Forces. should be organised. Although the Belgian Armed get funding from the state and congress decide about the funding congress should not decide how the Belgian Armed Forces is organised and how it is run. The president is the commander-in-chief and with the help of his minister of defense and his state secretary they give orders while we have very capable generals and other staff in the military who handle the day-to-day running of the Belgian Armed Forces. Although the he Belgian Armed Forces is our national army is mostly independent and non political. Congress decides on the funding and the military and as to be held accountable for what they did with the funding but congress should not meddle in how the Belgian Armed Forces is run or the day to day operations.

There recently have been people recruiting in eBelgium for other foreign militia like Ultra Marines. There where a lot of arguments against this but ofoourse there are also arguments for joining a foreign militia like the Ultrmarines or other militia’s that you have around the e-globe. Belgium citizens who join a foreign militia and who get more supplies will grow stronger faster. This would mean more stronger soldiers for eBelgium something that would help if in the future ebelgium was under attack. I do believe in a strong Belgian Armed forces and for people to join and keep people to stay in the Belgian Armed forces we need enough supplies I suggest giving the Belgian Armed forces more funding so they are able to to give enough supplies to our soldiers and help them to grow stronger.

The Belgium Training Academy has been a private “militia” who served as a place that trained new players. They are doing a marvelous job especially Elynea who has been doing a lot and has been paying a great deal of all the expenses. Belgium Training Academy should get more funding from the state to ensure that the new users who are in the Belgium Training Academy are given enough supplies and let them grown in full fledged soldiers. There also has to be a good from the integration from the Belgium Training Academy into the Belgian Armed Forces. At a certain point soldiers who are in the Belgium Training Academy should be moved to the Belgian Armed Forces and this transition should be made as easy as possible.


Foreign Affairs
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral" - Paulo Freire

Belgium is a neutral country but the was pushed to the ONE side a few months ago due to attacks by the UK and France where we got help from ONE countries. Luckily the relations between Belgium and those two countries who previously attacked us are now better then ever and we even did a short training wars with the United Kingdom. Our foreign affairs policy the last month has mostly been ONE based due the those previous events. Belgium has been a neutral country since it became independent from The Netherlands in the end of 2009. Although we should never forget that ONE countries have helped in our hour of need, we should also keep friends with Terra countries. Neutrality means not taking sides or walking the thin line between those two sides and that that we also need good relations with TERRA. I am hoping to strengthen our relations with TERRA and keep our relations with ONE. This also means having two MPP’s, one with TERRA and one with ONE.

An other important aspect of the foreign affairs ministry are the ambassadors. We have many ambassadors and many of them are inactive. The whole ambassador program needs a makeover and that will be one of the task I will be giving the new minister of foreign affairs and his state secretary. We need to refocus our ambassador efforts and and give the active ones the more important countries or give active ambassadors regions to be ambassador to, for instance ambassador to North America. This reward active ambassadors and helps eBelgium.


Finance
“Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers (six if one went to Harvard).” - Edgar R. Fiedler

Finance and the economy is pivotal for our country it provides the government funding for for instance the army and other important expenses that a country has. Since v2 it has been very hard for any president or minister of finance to make a well calculated decision or make a long term strategy seeing the game is completely changes every two weeks.

With the last changes there has been high consumption and this have lead to problems especially with not enough raw materials being on the market or them being on the market for very high prices. We should have taxes so it will be attractive for foreigners to put their materials especially raw materials on the market but will not be able to spoil the market for local producers. Countries like Poland produce a lot more then us, but with the currencies being almost worth nothing it is not worth selling in our country and exchanging their Belgian Frank for gold so it is not very rewarding for foreigners to sell products in our country. eBelgium has a free market, wages for for employees, product prices are decided by the market. The minister of Finance and congress should only intervene on the market by changing taxes when it’s really necessary.


Justice
“Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.” - Plato

I would like to burn the current constitution, Belgium does not really need a constitution and if I would make a new one it would be nothing more then a bill of rights. There is a mentality in eBelgium that if something is not in the constitution that it is now allowed and that every small thing should be added to the constitution. The constitution should only hold the bare basics and nothing bare basics. Other things further explaining stuff and setting rules should be done in separate laws. This would make things more uncluttered and if something needed to be changed it would be easier to make an amendment to a law then make an amendment to the constitution.

I would also like to bring back the Supreme Court. One of the problems with the supreme court besides that not all the decisions are enforceable was that Supreme Court judges where not able to hold the position of Supreme Court judge. We already have a small number of active citizens who are willing to take any official position and the stipulation that you cannot be in congress, hold a government post or be president only limit the people who are eligible to become a Supreme Court judge.If we bring back the Supreme Court it would be a good idea to scrap the stipulation or bring it back to less position where you are not eligible to be Supreme Court judge.

Miscellaneous


Merger

I do believer that a merger would be beneficial for eBelgium in the long run. My personal preference would be to merge again with the Netherlands but I am not excluding other options like a merger with the eUK. In the short term a merger with the eNetherlands is not an option seeing they not border us an most of their regions are being held by Poland. Seeing that eBelgium has not many regions and barely any bonuses the production of our companies is pretty low compared to most other countries in Erepublik. An other option would be the renting regions from neighbouring countries but most of the country we have a border with are not in a position to rent out regions. Besides the financial aspect there is also the social aspect to take in consideration if it is beneficial for eBelgium to merge with an other country. a merger with eNetherlands would be more a merger of equals while a merger with the eUK we would be absorbed in the eUK. If we would merge with the eUK there would be the chance that we have barely have a say in how the country is run or get Belgians into congress. Both the economic and social side has to be taken in consideration if we have to make this decision.

Cabinet
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt

A country needs a strong leader, not a manager. The difference between a leader and a manager is that A manager manages and takes responsibility of a situation. A leader takes charge, is influential, and sets an example. The manager has responsibilities and is able to delegate and implement plans. A leader is an example for others and is someone who doesn’t necessarily have a large responsibility. Managers have subordinates who follow their rules. A Leaders have individuals who believe in what they say, otherwise known as followers. Managers have subordinates who follow their rules. A Leaders have individuals who believe in what they say, otherwise known as followers. To Paraphrase Harry S. Truman “The responsibility of a great leader is to serve and not to dominate" A country needs a strong leader, somebody who has a vision who knows what he wants for the country and show initiative.

Congress always been been very influential and had much to say in all decisions that where made. In the trias politica the president and cabinet is the executive branch while congress is the legislature and the judicial power is in the hands of the courts. Congress has a legislature rights and the the executive branch is held responsible to the legislature branch, congress. Although I do not plead for a president who can do what he wants I do think a president who is chosen by the people and his cabinet who represent him should be able to make decisions on their own.

My plan is a cabinet of National Unity, a cabinet where all parties are included and will be given a position in my cabinet. I think it is important in a small country like ours that all parties are represented. There will be not that many changes in the cabinet structure seeing the cabinet structure that we have used in Belgium is working just fine, if it aint broke don't fix it. The only changes in positions in my cabinet this month will the that I brought the minister of justice back, and that I made a new state secretary under the minister of Home Affairs the state secretary for wiki. I have asked Jofroi to be my vice president. he was originally suppose to run for president but due to lack of time he decided not to run. He is very experienced in government and I asked him be be my vice president.

My cabinet will be a meritocracy cabinet, it will be based on merrit and not just because people have been holding the same position for a very long time. Also because there where multiple people who did not have the time this month to be a cabinet member this has given me the chance to ask new people to be part of my cabinet. It is always good to have new people in a cabinet who have a fresh view on things. With Mittekemuis option more a advisory role and other like Pieter, NLSP and Critically also not able to take a cabinet position this was a good chance to do so. I will not post my cabinet yet but I already asked multiple people who have not yet been in cabinet in eBelgium to help me this month.

Why vote for me

I am a firm believer in Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Freedom, Equality and brotherhood). Everybody in eBelgium is free, free to do or stand where he or she wants to stand, believe what he or she wants to believe and say what that person wants to say as long as it's not hurtful or offensive in any way to somebody else. Everybody is equal. Nobody is less just because he is a lower level, has less experience or any thing else. We need to to stick up for each other, we are all brothers, we all want what is best for our country. Sometimes this means setting our own pride and ego aside and doing what is best for our country and not what is best for our self.

I have the experience from my time in eSouth-Africa and the time that I already have spend here. I am a very active erepublik player, I am behind my pc most of the day on weekdays and check irc a lot during the weekends when I am not behind my pc. Even though I might not always be active on irc I will respond pretty fast when I am highlighted. The country needs a president who is active and can respond quickly when the need arisen,. I do believe I would do a good job and I hope that the citizens will give the the chance to proof that I am.

Onwards in Unity & Solidarity!



Presidential Candidate.
Minister of Foreign Affairs