Elisa Vorimberg - A Presidential Candidate!

Day 589, 08:23 • Published in Germany United Kingdom • by Elisa Vorimberg

Hello citizens of eGermany,

For those of you that don't know me, I'm Elisa Voribmerg, I'm in my 4th congress term, I served as minister of foreign affairs for Starkad's second term, and I am currently co-minister of foreign affairs. I started the game in Brandenburg and have only stepped foot out of Germany when we lost our last region. I have decided that I now wish to run for country president, and the Freie Deutsche Demokraten party has gratiously given me their nomination! (yey for the FDD!)
I realize it is a bit irregular to be running for president while being a member of my opponent's administration, but I have talked about it with Gobba and we agreed that a little healthy competition is a good thing.

Here is my platform and intentions for what to do as president:


The single largest problem facing eGermany, is underpopulation.
According to this site, Germany has over 55million internet users!
This is in sharp contrast with Indonesia with 25million internet users, and Poland with 20million internet users.

If we use Poland as the ratio of internet users to erepublik population, Germany should have ~21 thousand citizens, enough to become by far the biggest superpower in the eWorld! Instead we currently have just over 1 thousand citizens (with ~500 more in occupied regions and still in exile). This is unacceptable and we must work to change it!

My plan is to contact German newspapers and major blogs -- telling them about erepublik so they can write an article about it. Other countries have been able to get thousands of new citizens with a single newspaper article.

We need at least 2-3 thousand more citizens if we are going to be strong enough to defend ourselves.


As for any alliance, it would be irresponsible to immediately join any alliance right now. I will continue our pro-peace attitude, and our friendship with Canada, but avoid membership in any alliance for now.


Another issue is the current terrible communication between the administration, congress, and the people.
This was a huge problem for Starkad during his presidency, he neglected to write any newspaper articles or show any sign that there was an operational government during the invasion. Gobba has improved from that, but there is still a lot more room for improvement, especially when it comes to communication with congress.


As for the language debate, I don't think this will be solved easily. Those that don't speak German are not any less loyal to Germany, sure there might be a slightly higher risk that they might be a spy, but that is no reason to exclude them from politics! Especially with our low population, it would be very damaging to close Germany off from immigrants and people of German heritage that want to be in eGermany. But on the other side, German is the native language and should not be banned.
My solution to this issue is to create a new government organization providing free translations to newspapers in Germany.
As for congress and the administration, for now I don't think any rules need to be made for now.


One of the most significant points of my presidency, will be to reform the government.
Germany has been and essentially still is an Authoritarian government, especially in the last 2 months where was no active or responsive congress. (which was proven in May with this, and in June when there were almost no congress members whatsoever posting at all). Without an active congress the administration became increasingly internal. even tax discussions got moved into the higher levels of the administration, where everything is supposed to be top-secret.

While this was really the only way for out government to function at that time, we have an active and eager congress right now. Congress should not be given the same information as the average citizen. My plan is this:
1. Close off the congressional forum from being publicly viewable. The idea here is to make it so that congress can be given more information than the average citizen.
2. Create a formal and written constitution (with congress approval) to clearly decide what powers congress has, and what powers the president and ministers have.
3. As part of the constitution, a procedure will be made about de-classifying government discussions once they are concluded and no longer important to our national security.

I realize that the current congress is fairly new and inexperienced, but with a little guidance I think they are capable of making some decisions. I am confident that they will learn quickly.


Next is the ever-present transparency debate. I will not promise total transparency, simply because that is not a possibility given the number of threats we face and we need to keep a significant amount of information away from our enemies.

However, I think there should be a responsible hierarchy of information:
The president and ministers - information of vital and immediate importance to our national security.
Congress - information that the government has that is not of vital and immediate importance to our national security.
The Citizens - Declassified government discussions and frequent newspaper announcements by the different ministries and congress.

This will give us an reasonable transparency goal that will allow us to fight wars, and also keep a good and responsible flow of information between all the divisions of the government, and the people.


I also intend to re-build each ministry to meet new standards of efficiency and speed. Some of you might have heard of the USA's total restructure of their ambassadors? I created a system similar to that about 1.5 months ago, during the height of our issues with Sweden. I turned 5 ambassadors with no organization or communication into a highly efficient foreign ministry with ~30 staff members, providing myself and the president with a constant feed of information (in addition to the normal relationship building with each of the 30 countries that the staff covers).
I am very proud of my work there, and I want to bring such positive change to each of the ministries.



With all that concluded, I hope you will now be able to make an informed decision about who you want as your leader.

-Elisa Vorimberg

P.S. I am always available for interviews or questions from you. Send me a PM in-game or send me a message on the eGermany-irc or forum.