A Frank Assessment of the Present Situation in eJapan

Day 2,723, 01:30 • Published in Japan Nigeria • by Madame Yang

Since the recent dismantlement of democracy in our country, there have been several articles published seeking to assess precisely what went wrong and provide a compact overview of the current state of the nation. This piece represents my own relatively belated contribution to this trend, offered not so much because what has already been submitted by others is necessarily incorrect (for I believe much of it is fairly accurate), but because I feel that not enough has been said on certain aspects. Hopefully, in my own small way, I can at least partially rectify this.

The fact is that the great divide in eJapan is not Serb vs. non-Serb (there are Serbs on both sides, for one thing), nor even really democrat vs. despot; it is between those who would rule as a wrathful, sectarian clique to the exclusion of the rest of the country and those who would foster cooperation and cohesion within the multicultural society that is eJapan. Until only a few months ago, we had the latter situation. All of the parties agreed to forgo parochial disputes and work together for the benefit of the entire nation. We had the HEX administration (in which I was honored enough to serve in the cabinet) which did much to set eJapan back on track, including rebuilding relations with our neighbors and establishing one of the most extensive welfare programs in the entire eWorld. This could not have been possible without the collusion of the major political players. Of course, this rainbow coalition was not to last, as the closely aligned DNP, CtG, and TLS parties, feeling slighted, broke away from the rest and decided to run the country on their own.

Their grievances included perceived inadequacies in the equitable sharing of ministry assignments and the lack of recognition of their military unit's contributions to the country's defense. Were their complaints legitimate? Quite possibly. As they represented the lion's share of congress, it was probably fair enough for them to be consulted before the official cabinet listings were announced to the public. Since the government had been discussing subsidies for the nation's major military units, it was reasonable for the JSDF to expect special consideration, given the fact that they were (and indeed are) the largest and most active unit in eJapan. However, whether or not they were right to be embittered is now irrelevant; rather than formally protest and continue dialogue with their partners to square the situation, the DNP-CtG-TLS unilaterally embraced partisanship without warning. What followed was a hermetic, sad sack regime that persists to this day. There are now effectively two congresses in eJapan: one comprised of seats won by DNP-CtG-TLS members and one comprised of the rest. You can guess how often the second is consulted on affairs of state, or even permitted to join discussion.

Ignored, frustrated, and alienated by their own government, the other parties (representing literally 49.9% of the country - seriously, check out the results of the April election) resorted to truly desperate means. When a former president of eJapan (then MoFA of ePortugal) launched an ill-advised coup d'etat to topple the ruling faction of his prior homeland, the opposition found themselves unable to side with the DNP-CtG-TLS; those three parties that maintained a stranglehold on political power in eJapan were perceived as not representing the interests of any citizen who was not a member of them. Does this justify the opposition's backing of the coup? By no means, but effects have their causes and it is important to have perspective on these matters. I speak as one of the few citizens (if not the only one) who fought against both this coup and the one subsequently instigated by the DNP-CtG-TLS that established the dictatorship we have today.

When you win an election, you get to govern - that is democracy (at least in eRepublik); the DNP-CtG-TLS does represent the majority (if only by fractions of a percentile), but what does this mean for eJapan as a whole? When you vilify half of your country's citizens as no less than "traitors" and "Nazis", subject them to economic terrorism, deliberately exclude and ignore their elected representatives, and set up a dictatorship to freeze any progression out of such a mess, I think it's safe to say that there is a problem. If this is not addressed, there can only be civil war. The battle lines might have been more nuanced before, but so long as there is dictatorship in eJapan, I know which side I'm on.

For what it's worth, consider this my endorsement of Hideyoshi Nicolas for president.

~ Madame Yang