Break the Deadlock - Save the BHP, VOTE HOPE

Day 4,812, 03:05 • Published in Belgium South Africa • by OKayOK


It gives me no pleasure to have to write this article to you today. I wish we as a country could Unite, but instead, we find ourselves being more polarized than ever before. This is not meant to be an article about blaming people but an article about putting the record straight. Let's go back through history. We can always learn from it and it gives us a perspective of how things were under the previous government. We had very little activity at all. I do not want to blame ATO for this or call them useless even though I have done that in the past. Rather I would like to thank them. At a time when this game was falling apart with players leaving in huge amounts. ATO became not leadership but an administrator of Belgium. This was a role that many countries needed administrators to fulfil. Someone had to keep the Training Wars going for the Citizens that remained. Politics in Belgium went unchallenged, because hey, the game had fallen apart anyway. I am of a different mind, that we can make this game whatever we want to make it! We have a responsibility as your leaders to ensure that we make a political system that is fun. A political system that benefits the entire country!

This brings us to the problem with the Belgian Housing Project (BHP) and Congress. I don't like to talk about my personal life in eRepublik. Yet sometimes we have to explain the context for things that have happened. My wife got sick and I had to go to the hospital with her. In South Africa, where I live the Covid pandemic is hitting hard. This is not because there's a large number of people that have got covid-19. It is more because our hospitals are not equipped to deal with such a pandemic. Getting my wife into hospital for a very serious condition more than of 48 hours. That was 48 hours I did not sleep and that was 48 hours I worried about my wife. That was 48 hours where I was trying to ensure that all our obligations in this game stayed fulfilled. This is where the important role of a Prime Minister comes in. A Prime Minister is there to step in for the president to ensure the continued running of everything.

Before I was waiting at the hospital, I calculated the concessions that we had to pay to our partners. I ran these concession numbers by CurlyBear. This is what I always do because he was the architect of the concessions that we currently have! It is out of respect for him and also knowing that he is very knowledgeable about how the whole system works. I had calculated it and I saved in a Google Spreadsheet. As you all know spreadsheets have many sheets within them presented as tabs at the bottom. Being in the hospital and on my phone, I took the figure from 3 weeks before out of error. I did not change tabs. This resulted in me overpaying the UK and Russia. After I had recovered from 48 hours of no sleep I checked these concessions. and I became aware that there was an error. Russia contacted me and they will quite happy for us to correct the mistake and the next payment. I was about to contact UK to let them know that there was an error.

This is when it all fell apart with Congress! When I was on Discord, I noticed that CurlyBear had decided that I would no longer be handing concessions. ATO decided they will pay concessions with a law proposal for Donation to the Russian and UK country organisation. This is a fundamental change from the way that we do business as government. Even from the way that ATO did business in government. We would propose a donation law of 400000cc to the National Bank of Berlin (NB😎 organisation. The executive branch of government; being the President and all the Ministers can get access to and have the money distributed to them through this organisation. We could then fulfil projects like the Belgian Housing Project. or our proposed AirStrike Program. Since I have become President, the opposition has hounded me if I am to not do something quite the way that they see fit. I am belittled, called an upstart, daft arse, fascist, homophobic, sexist. I am called names and I am frankly quite sick of it.





I did not receive an overwhelming mandate to become President. I won by a single vote. Yet democracy did prevail! If Congress decides that there is such a change that needs to happen, then it is important that this is debated by Congress and agreed on. If they feel it necessary that they handle concessions through donations, that is their right to do! Yet three or four opposition members making that decision unilaterally in a Discord Server and dictating that decision to everybody else results in problems. Here is the first problem: as many of you know we have proposed Donation Laws of 400000cc to the National Bank of Belgium.

VOTE 1:


VOTE 2:


This would have allowed us to not only pay concessions but it would have also allowed us to do the Belgian Housing Project which is a vital project for what we are doing in this National Project. Congress under the leadership of CurlyBear has decided that we no longer have a right to any money to run projects!

No one is to blame, except the opposition that this week we missed the Belgium Housing Project. There's been a lot of accusations and misinformation going around. They have made claims that I did not submit a budget (cost and expenditure) report to Congress. I am the first President to do so in the last 4 years! I submitted it to congress! It became very clear that with the loss of the concessions from the UK and Hungary, we would not be able to cover our current project (BHP). New projects would have to take a back seat. This is when the blame game started. Members of the opposition started making accusations that we will ruin the country because we were growing the country. Think about that for a second; how can you ruin a country by growing a country.



This is a game and in this game, we play to succeed and succeeding in this game means growing! It is not a desirable place to be the smallest, most insignificant country in the world. For an administrator like the previous regime, that could be a desirable situation. To go unnoticed, to not play the game and hold everything in place has its benefit on workload. I understand that yet, this is no longer the previous regime. We won on a platform of change, on a platform of growth, on a platform of activity and that is what we plan to do!

It has become so plain that the current sitting of congress is incapable of doing it. We need to look at our financial situation and we need to make some tough decisions. We have two potential concession partners lined up. We are ironing out the details on that. If we can get these concessions in place in a favorable manner, we will once again be in a position to help all citizens in this country.

Until then, our project will have to help those that are the most vulnerable. Those that are the youngest, those that need to level up to help this country become better. As Andy Justice pointed out: "Of our 120 active citizens, 48 are D2 or lower. 36 of those are D1. eBelgium is poised for growth. Helping our younger citizens, especially those in D1, to grow stronger and advance should be a priority. By doing this, not only do we become more unified, we also increase our economic activity. Moreover, stronger players with more XP better prepare us to defend ourselves from potential enemies. Programs like housing and food subsidies for these younger players should be encouraged.".

The government needs to develop these Divisions and bring them up and strength. By doing this we not only help the player but we help the country. This is why we propose that either we help only those under level 50 or those in D1 and D2 with houses. This allows us to stretch our budget and ensure that as a country, we continue to thrive. When we put it to Congress, CurlyBear said that we are now excluding people. Well as far as I know we have programs to make this country better not as a right to free stuff for certain players.

We have to sometimes make these hard decisions and this is what we are doing! As of now; the executive and Congress do not have a good relationship and it makes me very sad because one of my campaign goals was to build bridges. I promised to heal wounds and to move this nation forward in Unity.

I am in a position now where this has become impossible. I ask you to consider what we can do about this and how we can move forward. I ask that you give HOPE the mandate it needs to rule this country by voting HOPE this 25th of January for Congress. We need you to ensure that we get above 50% and a full mandate from the people of this nation. We can then move forward and we can have a Congress that chooses to work with government instead of working against it. Having above 50% does not mean that we get to bypass Congress, it means that everyone gets to have a voice! The opposition gets to have the voice, we get have a voice but what it does stop is a Deadlock. We need to ensure that this country never has the Deadlock like it did this week. We need to ensure that this country continues moving forward and only way we can do that is to break the percentages that are causing the Deadlock!
This is the shocking attitude of the opposition:

They would rather destroy the market than accept the fact that they do not rule

It has become clear that the opposition is not willing to work with us. They are only willing to rule even if they have not been given that capability. They would be happy if HOPE was a puppet government that did whatever they wanted us to do but we are not a puppet government. We are the new government and we intend to stay that way! We intend to grow and grow and grow the country along with us, we intend to take this country down the road of Unity. We will take this country on the path to prosperity. We want change and we will bring change if you give us a mandate