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Hello, eBelgians,
In a few hours the torch will be passed to your new government under the direction of Nohjis, and it is time to report and reflect on what has happened in eBelgium this month.

At the beginning of this month, we had experienced several months of so-called civil war on our forum, culminating in the de facto resignation of Ward de Bever before the end of his term, with Jofroi left as the functional CP without the in-game title or powers. I felt it was part of my mandate as CP to help restore peace and civility, and although we are still not perfect, I believe there has been real progress on this front. There were many factors contributing to this, and the credit has to go to the citizens who made a conscious effort to focus on issues rather than personalities. Work remains to be done, and as MoHA under Nohjis, I hope to continue to help in this area.



I promised to listen and to be responsive to the will of the majority during this month, and that commitment was tested by the end-of-year missions. There was a lot of interest in having a natural enemy declaration in order to complete these missions, which I was hesitant about because of our delicate balance between our neighbors in ONE and TERRA/EDEN, as well as our relative lack of size and strength. Congress saw fit to overrule me on this point and declared France a Natural Enemy. Although I continue to believe this was a very risky move, it did allow many people to complete the missions, and thanks to the efforts of several people, with special thanks to Nohjis and Jofroi, and with the cooperation of eFrance, we were able to finish the war and regain our regions, although with a greatly reduced Congress.

With regard to the Congress, we faced a PTO threat this month, made more dangerous by the fact that each elected member of Congress has more than the usual number of citizenship passes. Again, this was averted by the efforts of many, including Jofroi, Nohjis, NLSP, Mudduck95 and e|1temkd, all of whom spent time on Christmas day to help monitor votes and/or update the voting advice sheet. Although we lost Congress members for this term whom we would like to have seen elected, the effort was successful overall.



Following the two recent wars with France, and the extra ONE MPPs which resulted from the first one, many countries have decided that eBelgium should be considered pro-ONE. We continue to maintain that it is our policy to be neutral, and to demonstrate this, we have signed 2 ONE MPPs and 2 from TERRA/EDEN following the conclusion of the most recent war. We are also considering other alliances with countries that are regarded as neutral. It is our hope that these MPPs will provide our citizens opportunities to fight and rank up without giving up our neutrality.



Finally, with regard to forum activity, we encourage all citizens to visit and participate. We have a variety of things going on, including several games which appear to be addictive to some of our members, opportunities to get advice about missions, the economy, and other things important to our citizens, and legislation that any citizen may comment on. The input of all is welcome.

We wish the best of luck to our new CP, Nohjis, and his government, and look forward to another productive month.

Thank you for this opportunity to serve you.

With love,

MaryamQ