26 July 2024
Show Them Your Anger: Fires and Broken Windows in Lantaž and Sinajärv as “Rodokan Question” becomes “Rodokan Crisis”
SINAJÄRV, Rodoka and the Isles (TavariFax)– Žarís Nevran Alandar, the only Tavari Prime Minister to be fluent in Rodokan, was once beloved in the Rodokan capital where she served her military conscription, but with piles of shattered glass along High Street and char marks on the ground in Jürjo Square, it could not be clearer that the Prime Minister’s proposed answer to “the Rodokan question” has been resoundingly rejected by the Rodokan population not just in Tavaris but Rodoka itself as well. Rodokans were in the streets not within hours but minutes of the Prime Minister’s announcement, late in the working day on a Friday in futile hopes of dodging media attention, that the government’s answer to the total disenfranchisement of ethnic Rodokan Tavari citizens living in the Kingdom of Tavaris by the Ranat Accords—which removed the 20 seats for Rodokan tribes from the National Diet of Tavaris but did not replace them with any other way for Tavari citizens not members of any of the 1,152 traditional Tavari Lines to elect representation in the national legislature—was to create a new Diet Delegate seat for “Resident Rodokans,” as well as another for “Other Union Citizens”, a result that leaves the some 400,000 ethnic Rodokans living in Tavaris with one Delegate while ethnic Tavari enjoy representation at one Delegate for, depending on how one counts, between 30,000 and 60,000 people. Nominally, these changes technically rectify two glaring failures of democracy in Tavaris generated by the conflict between Tavaris’ uncommon tradition of clan-based electoral representation and the Ranat Accords’ mandate that Tavari Union citizens have the right to vote in any Tavari Union country in which they are resident. The reality, however, is that this decision has been unquestionably rejected, as evidenced by the burning rage on the island of a level unseen since the Tavari-Milofite War.
It was not for lack of trying that the Tavari legislature came to settle on what has been nicknamed the “Line Rodoka solution” to the “Rodokan question.” A solution that Rodokans immediately asked for, and which Prime Minister Nevran Alandar initially supported, was to calculate upon each election the average size of a Tavari Line, and then to afford Rodokans in Tavaris a number of Diet Delegates so that the Rodokans enjoyed an equal number of voters per Delegate as ethnic Tavari voters. In theory, the total number of all people in each Tavari Line is always known to the Tavari government through the tašriran family registry system and voter registration numbers, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs publishes official population counts every 6 years and estimates annually. This solution hit a stumbling block very early, however, for one reason: the Diet could not come to an agreement on whether Tavari voters living outside Tavaris ought to be counted for purposes of calculating the average size. There are some 36 million people living in Tavaris, but there are Tavari people living all around the world, especially in Rodoka, Acronis, and Elatana, who are still members of Tavari Lines and who are still eligible to vote in Tavari elections. There are another 35 million people in Rodoka, Acronis, and Elatana, many of whom are in Tavari Lines but, crucially, who no longer participate in the tašriran system and whose numbers are therefore unable to be accurately counted by the government. The Prime Minister and her allies on the question, centre-left Ítan Ladrena, came to support counting only those resident in Tavaris for purposes of representation, which would have given the Rodokans about one Delegate for every 30,000 people, or 14 Delegates. The Liberals were only prepared to use the larger 60,000 number, for half the Delegates, but the green parties and the Tavari National Party both balked—nominally because of the “inherent uncertainty of numbers” as Tavari National Party leader Del. Tazena Oren Inzar stated in Diet debates, but almost certainly more to do with objections over, in the greens’ case Rodokan whaling and, in the nationalists’ case, Rodokan representation at all. Attempts to simply restore the same 20 Rodokan seats as had existed prior to the Ranat Accords failed because this number was higher than the 14 many had already rejected, meanwhile, Rodokan negotiators rejected this and the prior solutions because they viewed the previous count of 20 Delegates too low, noting that the true population of Rodokan tribes included all 6 million Rodokans and, if these numbers were used, Rodokans ought to have not 14 or 20 Delegates but 200.
Several votes over the course of 2023 failed each and every time to reach the requisite ⅔ majority to enact a change. An attempt to create new Diet seats through ordinary statute was ruled unconstitutional in January of 2024, as the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that “the text of the Instruments of Governance clearly and unequivocally states that the National Diet shall consist of one Delegate for each Line ‘and any other members as the Diet may establish by constitutional legislation.’” His Esteemed Majesty’s Government had argued in court that “constitutional legislation” was undefined in the text of the Instruments and therefore not a valid constraint, but the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that, according to the recorded notes of the drafting of the Instruments, the phrase ‘constitutional legislation’ was selected specifically to refer to the Treaty of Sinajärv of 1634, the document which annexed Rodoka into Tavaris and afforded the Rodokans a degree of autonomy and political rights, most crucially that Rodokan tribes would be afforded the same dignity as Tavari Lines. “The legal tradition and political convention throughout the entire history of the written Tavari constitution since 1793 has very clearly been that treaties only carry constitutional force if ratified by a ⅔ vote of the Diet. Furthermore, the Instruments establishes a procedure known as ‘entrenching legislation with constitutional status,’ which the Diet has used for centuries to override court decisions with which it disagrees and enact any number of other legal maneuvers so long as they do not explicitly negate any pre-existing constitutional text. This also requires a ⅔ majority. There is simply no basis for the government’s fantasy that there has never been a definition for ‘constitutional legislation.’”
Any hope the 68th Diet had of coming to a genuine solution went out the window in January when the Prime Minister’s confidence-and-supply partners Republican Alternative merged their party into The Liberals and she therefore lost her effective majority, to say nothing of the political and social crisis caused by the shooting of the Emperor in February. There were protests in Sinajärv and Lantaž in March when the Prime Minister announced that the temporary solution enacted after the Ranat Accords, randomly pairing each of the 20 Rodokan tribes to one of the Tavari Lines (except the 20 largest) for the purposes of electing a Delegate, would carry over to the next general election, which she ended up calling only weeks later. This solution was palatable to Rodokans in that each of these Lines immediately became majority Rodokan—hundreds of thousands of Rodokan voters compared to tens of thousands of Tavari—but, as one could expect, entirely unpalatable to the Tavari citizens in those Lines who complained that they had been disenfranchised. After every single one of the 20 Lines assigned Rodokans went for the Prime Minister’s party in the 2024 election, including historically stalwart Liberal lines like Olóntra and Anandra, The Liberals and the Tavari National Party made clear they would not tolerate this solution being used for another election. Despite The Liberals forming part of the coalition government, they insisted to the Prime Minister they would only accept the option put forward by the nationalist Official Opposition: one Delegate for all Rodokans resident in Tavaris. As a compromise, they offered to also establish one Delegate for all other unlined Tavari Union citizens, a delegacy at least equivalent to the Rodokan one in disproportionality, if not more. This was enough to sway Green Tavaris, and with a total of 420 delegates between them, this meant that the remaining delegates could never attain a ⅔ majority to pass any other solution. Ultimately, the measure establishing the two new delegacies passed by 794-358, with every party except the Prime Minister’s joining together to vote for the bill.
For her part, the Prime Minister came out in fierce opposition to the bill but described her hands as tied. “The Tavari legislature was unable to reach a solution that was fair, just, or equitable. The Tavari legislature made the wrong decision today, one that promises to do nothing except sow further resentment and division in the hearts of a noble people who have been a part of us for four hundred years, but who are now robbed of genuine political representation for no reason at all except the most disgustingly blatant, self-serving politicking this country has ever seen. Being opposed to whaling—something plenty of Tavari do too—is no reason to deny a group equal representation in the legislature. Denying a group equal representation because its members tend to vote for political parties you don’t like is repugnant to democracy and a permanent ugly stain on the Tavari social fabric, and the outright specism on display from the Tavari National Party in denying Rodokans their fair share of seats simply because they feel only Tavari people should vote is so unconscionable it is beyond words. I am so deeply ashamed of my country today, but I must respect the fundamental law in this country that the Diet is sovereign and that it has chosen, with its lawful authority, this deeply wrong path. This law has become part of the Tavari constitution, but I pledge to you today from this day forward to do everything in my power to overturn it and replace it with something just and fair.”
The Presiding Chief of Rodoka and the Isles, Ivi Puna Laar, had long been a stalwart ally and fellow neoliberal spirit of the Prime Minister, but when she stepped out of her office to address the angry crowd gathering in the square named for the last independent High Chief of Rodoka, it became clear that Irínavi Voi’s opposition to the bill was not sufficient and the days of their friendship are over. “April 14th, 2022 was the scariest night of my life. Tavaris, which was my country at the time, stood at the brink of civil war, with Akronist terrorists encircling a Tavari military base and two almost-halves of the country at each other’s throats. Rodoka stood in the middle then, surrounded by fire and rage, trapped and afraid. I knew then, we all learned then, that it was time for us to take charge of our own destiny. But in those first few hours of panicked negotiations, all of us crammed into a tacky hotel conference begging Vana [Dandreal] and Žarís to step back from the cliff, I made a terrible decision. When Žarís Nevran Alandar came up to me, head drooped, voice low, shoulders hunched in shame, and told me that the agreement as written would ‘accidentally’ result in Rodokans living outside Rodoka to lose their Diet representation, I looked out the window, out over the dark shadows of the trees and the mountains, and imagined fire and smoke and blood and war, and I was afraid. When she told me she was afraid the Akronists would reject the whole deal if we had to reopen negotiations, I feared that standing up for Rodoka would mean the end of Rodoka and everywhere else in this Tavari world we were forced to live in. So I relented. I said ‘we’ll give it a few months, and get this settled before the next election.’ I did it for peace. I did it for fear. Well, Rodokans, here we are. It’s been two years. There’s been an election. Their liberals don’t like the parties we vote for, their environmentalists don’t like the whaling we do, and their nationalists don’t like that humans can vote, so their legislature—their legislature, the one they kicked us out of—couldn’t pick an answer that gave us any actual representation. In other words, Rodokans don’t get democracy because it’s inconvenient. Rodoka, Žarís Nevran Alandar called me just now and, in that same low, ashamed voice, asked me to come out here and ‘say something’ to you. She wants me to ask you to calm down and go home, but Rodoka, what I am here to tell you to do is to speak what seems to be the only language the Tavari understand: rage, fire, and fear. Do not calm down and go home, Rodokans. Go out and show them your anger.”
The Rodokans complied.
In Sinajärv, an angry, shouting mob moved down High Street from the square to the waterfront, leaving shattered storefronts and burning refuse in their wake. But the bulk of Rodokans living in Tavaris live in or around Lantaž, and at press time, Lantaž was still burning. Marshalls estimated some 250,000 people in the city center—a third of the population of the Lantaž metropolitan area—before the assembly was declared unlawful and protestors ordered to disperse. The crowd refused to comply and charged at the Marshall position protecting the controversial statue of Akronist Matron Ilara Nevran Lendreaž that Rodokans have been defacing and attempting to destroy for decades. Akronist defenders of the statue attempted to respond with force, which aggravated not just the Rodokans but also Tavari nationalist counter-demonstrators, who very quickly became counter-rioters. Marshalls reported 12 people dead in Lantaž and more than 500 people arrested, but more specific details such as the species or political affiliation of the dead or arrested were unavailable. Citing an “active law enforcement intervention underway as we speak,” Marshalls declined to comment.
Tavari political leaders such as The Liberals party president and Deputy Prime Minister Henda Lanaš Bettõndra placed the blame for the violence squarely on Ms. Puna Laar, saying “Ivi Puna Laar, who is still a Tavari citizen, just stood in front of the world and openly called for outright political violence. This is textbook incitement and if Ivi Puna Laar steps foot on Tavari soil even one more time in her life, she should be and, spirits as my witness will be arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of her life in responsibility for the 12 people who have died today just because a foreign Prime Minister did not like the lawful choice made by our democratically elected legislature.” Del. Kolai Šandra Vencrandíl, party president of Ítan Ladrena, concurred: “It is so deeply irresponsible, so deeply repugnant, for Ivi Puna Laar to deliberately incite political violence in a foreign, allied country. Reasonable people can disagree, but as the head of government of a country, Ivi should know that you can’t put this anger in the hearts of already angry people and hope to get anywhere constructive with it. This will solve nothing and create more problems.”
The Leader of His Esteemed Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, Tavari National Party president Del. Tazena Oren Inzar, has called Ms. Puna Laar’s speech “an outright and deliberate act of terrorism and war” and called for war with Rodoka, an option that is sure to fall on deaf ears with the Rodokan-speaking Commander-in-Chief, but concerningly, Ms. Oren Inzar also said “We will respond to this even if the Prime Minister does not.” It was unclear who “we” refers to in her statement, and the Delegate’s office declined comment for this article. The purple-black-and-white nationalist flag popularised by violent anti-Akronist rioters in the 1960s Crematorium Crisis could be seen flying in Lantaž as well as in apparent solidarity demonstrations in Višara, the known hotbed of Tavari nationalist activity, but also in Good Harbour and Nuvrenon. Demonstrations in the national capital were quickly cleared off the street by forceful Marshall activity, with unconfirmed reports of Marshalls firing their guns in the air toward protestors, but the demonstration in Good Harbour was allowed to proceed and as of press time was reported to remain peaceful. Rodokan National Police officers posted in Palace Square as part of the Emperor’s security detail reportedly withdrew from the street, but a spokesperson for the agency said “the National Police will remain inside the Palace in observation of our treaty agreement with Tavaris to protect our High Chief.”
A high level source within the Silver Court, who TavariFax is keeping anonymous because they were not authorised to speak on the record, said that an offer by Emperor Otan IV to make a speech to Rodokans was refused by Ivi Puna Laar. “She laughed in [the Emperor’s] face and said that it would be useless because ‘you can’t actually do anything anyway.’ The Emperor’s Rodokan has never been great, and he has only visited Rodoka as High Chief maybe three or four times. They don’t care what he has to say. This entire debacle has well and truly destroyed any good will the Rodokans have toward Tavaris and toward Tavari culture.” In an unsigned, written response to the claim, the Silver Court said “While we do not comment on press rumors of hearsay or on the private, constitutionally privileged conversations the High Chief has with his Presiding Chief, the Silver Court states firmly and proudly on the record that Otan IV loves the people of Rodoka and the Isles and wants nothing more than peace on the streets of the Tavari Union. The way to solve our differences, all of our differences, is always through peace and mutual respect.” The Silver Court declined to answer questions on whether the Emperor plans to address the people of Rodoka or the people of Tavaris regarding the riots, referring them to the Office of the Prime Minister, which responded with another unsigned, written statement: “The Kingdom of Tavaris has been made aware that the High Chief of the United Tribes of Rodoka and the Isles has been asked by the Presiding Chief to refrain from commenting on the current situation. We will not interfere.”
The United Tribes of Rodoka and the Isles declined to comment for this article.