Hello Everyone! A Little History, Why I Support Tsunami and You Should Too.
shirosakura
Hello everyone! My name is Athena, and I'm a returning player to the eWorld and a relatively new player to eJapan. It's nice to meet you guys~
I wanted to announce the launch of my newspaper, 桜新聞, the Sakura Newspaper. This will be two things: a way for me to communicate my personal thoughts and feelings to the eWorld, and also a potential outlet for Free eJapan Press Releases and Tsunami business. I hope that I'm able to reach a lot of people through my words, and work to make eJapan a better place!
But to the point of the article, I wanted to take about the Tsunami movement, and the ideas that I had for it, for us, moving into the future. For a myriad of reasons, it's true we now find ourselves shut out by the current government, but that's no reason to not be taking steps to improve ourselves even more. Matter of fact, a lot of good things are already happening that everyone can get involved in!
History (for a little background)
To say that a lot has happened is the understatement of century. To make this as simple as I can I manage, there was a time that eJapan was ruled by a unified coalition government. To make a convoluted story short, people were mistreated, others felt slighted, and all around feelings were hurt. So the largest majority of that coalition (the DNP-CtG-TLS group) split off and claimed an electoral victory for themselves, changing the political landscape of Japan. Things existed like this for awhile, until the remaining opposition parties, in a attempt to regain political power in Japan, what is today's Tsunami coalition launched a coup in an effort to regain power. It failed. And three days later, the ruling coalition responded in kind with launching a coup on Day 2,713 of the new world, Saturday, April 25th, 2015. They succeeded despite citizen opposition, and Japan has existed as an autocracy ever since. There are now two sides, the ruling and internationally-recognized military government, and the unofficial government in exile, Free eJapan.
That's about as simple as I can put it without going into a long series of events that are still disputed today. If you want to read more about what happened, Madame Yang wrote a pretty comprehensive piece on why things played out this way and why our side is so torn up about this.
Why Should You Support Tsunami?
What Tsunami stands for, what the Shinsengumi, the Otaku Party, the United Lollies of Japan all ultimately fight for is the restoration of democracy and for a free and fair eJapan. The way things stand, the way our government is designed, leaves very little room for political input from the people of eJapan. Our congressman and president are essentially figureheads who have no real lawmaking powers, and under the current autocratic system all national decisions rest in the absolute authority of the dictator and their cabinet. In eRepublik, the only system of checks and balances the people are afforded are our powers to vote. Without that, the people have been stripped of their right to *fairly* participate in the government.
How does this manifest itself? When leaders can't be held accountable, they are free to do as they please, whether you like it or not. Don't like something? Want to see it changed? Short of declaring political allegiance, you voice has no incentive to be heard. Transparency in the government is virtually nonexistent, because in a system where you don't have to answer to the people, why do so, right? Effectively, the voices of all of those who don't speak with rulers are silenced, and there's nothing the minority can do about it. This is what makes these types of dictatorships so dangerous.
So, as you probably figured out by now, there's a ton of bad blood between what is essentially two opposing sides. I'm not officially affiliated with either party (I'm just a really concerned party member), but I'll be the first to say that we did a lot of things wrong, and we paid for it. Was the former ruling coalition free of any wrongdoing? Absolutely not. But I'm not them. And in the end, they aren't the party I've decided to invest my time and my elife into. Why? Not for the actions of their past, but for the plan for our future.
I'm willing to let the past be the past. Everyone keeps saying that in order for eJapan to move forward, we must be united. I agree, we need to end what has essentially become a long game of "he said, she said." But in order to do that, in order for us to have a stable transition to democracy, it's going to take a real effort from both sides to stop focusing on what happened and instead put our energy towards what's happening. We need to focus on the future.
I'd like to reiterate the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing I'm saying is a new or novel proposal, and this article would not be possible without paying homage to the once and future leaders. But I don't think there's a more fitting way to start my paper than like this.
My next article will be an Op-Ed of sorts, and will focus on what my ideas for the future of the Tsunami movement are. If you think I need to make any (reasonable) corrections to any of the history section above, please let me know in the comments, otherwise, feedback is greatly appreciated! I'll see you guys later!
Comments
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Hi Athena,
Please read my CP article that is published.
I will not say that everything here that is written about past events is wrong, but if you want to be objective, you should hear and the other side of the story. And, I agree that we must now think on the future, not to live in the past. You (as everyone else citizen of eJapan) can send me IGM, and we can discuss about everything.
And, I do not want to make article from this comment, but only one thing more to tell you: Me, as a elected President had choose my government team. And many countries have the same rule: that formally there is dictator, but president makes all decisions. (yesterdays coup in Cuba, is latest example) Why? Because of protection of hostile foreign military coups. You were not a long time in the game, game mechanics had changed a lot in meanwhile..
Hello Master President~ I didn't think you would stop by, but thank you!
About the history section, I tried to make it as simple as possible without including a lot of the details, simply because combing through the details was extremely hard Stuff like Maid Cafe, and the dissolution of the TOP5, events like tend to make the news for a little bit, but the two coups were major points in Japanese history that were covered fairly well in the papers, the only historical source I have. I might even say that the initial reaction is to favor the ruling party, since our side did indeed fire the first shot. However, If you can direct me to writers from your side who have done a good job chronicling the pace of events, please do so! I want to collect as much information about the old Japan as I can, and I would greatly appreciate your help.
And I won't lie I have been gone a long time (when I first joined the game, everyone was encouraged to live in the Q5 Hopsitial and Defense regions, and that's long gone), but this is where I have to disagree with you. Frankly, the "dictatorship as a protection" excuse has been used to justify A LOT of regimes in history (some good, most bad), and I don't buy it. Does Japan have any political enemies that the five major military units+Nebula couldn't outgun? Tsunami definitely doesn't have the military strength to launch a successful revolution. And even if there weren't a dictatorship, the TLS-CtG-DNP coalition would still easily control the Diet and easily have the strongest military force in Japan. My personal belief and the party line of Tsunami stands that there is no need for a dictatorship anymore.
Democracy brings inherent values of fairness,equality, accountability and Justice to the table that just aren't present in a dictatorship, and I know that you truly want to see this country healed. Why can't we be allowed to work together as a government that affords everyone an equal chance at making a difference?
Also, I'm sorry for the wall of text. I just have a lot of feels and I've been holding them in for a long time xD
You are right on, the dictatorship here is no protection. And it is just PR to say the president chooses the cabinet or that he makes decisions. In the end, only the dictator can make things happen, and if we had won the elections the president would be completely powerless - the dictator answer only to his party. And it's not as if everyone in the ruling coalition agreed on everything, so it's worse than one party getting 100% in congress: it's like 5 people being the whole congress.
Also, the dictatorship module is described very well in the updates, so no point in blaming someone's absence and/or mechanics.
@shirosakura: my answer here will be again new article, so please if you want to continue our discussion, feel free to send me IGM, and we will talk about every theme that you are interested 🙂
@Tomasz: you too can free to do the same, of course 🙂 Probably we will not agree about many themes, but dialog wont harm at all, it can only bring good things. Of course too, that not everyone are single minded in our coalition, I not even want to everybody thinks the same about everything, that would not be natural. About dictatorship module, you can also explain me (better in IGM, but you can here also if you prefer that), how your dictatorship will work if your coup was successful? It is not only rules, experience of the others are counted, too. And currently, 45/75 have dictatorship. so it must be the reason for that? But, not all dictatorships are same..
Wonderful, I will await your article, and I'll be more than happy to discuss it when it releases. Just be mindful though, I don't actually have any power in the Tsunami coalition yet, so it wouldn't be anything more than an exchange of ideas 🙂 (I'm working on the getting into a leadership position part lol)
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It nice to see some fresh blood xD As for the which parties support the Tsunami movement part, you can say that pretty much every party outside the DNP-CtG-TLS coalition and not just the ones you named support it. We all help us much as we can.