TavariPost Renationalized, Ranat Accords Amended, Metradan City Renamed, Metrati Anar ‘Respectfully Declines’ Self-Determination—and It’s Only Tuesday
ANARÍS, Metrati Anar-- The Council of the Tavari Union has decided that the news has been too slow lately, it would seem. In an absolute blockbuster of a meeting on Tuesday, several items that had not been previously listed on the public agenda—each of which could certainly justify at least one article of their own—were added to the agenda by emergency resolutions introduced by no fewer than four of the council’s eight voting members. The Council had to go into executive session, sending out all members of the public, including the press, to deliberate in private, two separate times, and at one point Tavari Prime Minister Žarís Nevran Alandar—who held the Union Presidency for this last meeting of the Union’s first year—had to put the meeting in recess to take a phone call from, as she described it, “the CEO of an actively collapsing corporation with a monopoly on a fundamental public service.”
That corporation is TavariPost, the private corporation whose 2002 creation under Liberal Prime Minister Kola Vidas Nakrodat was initially hailed as successful, kicking off a wave of privatizations under multiple governments that decade. However, it struggled significantly in the decades following, with dual punches thrown in 2011 by Prime Minister Nodri Randai Doranan, whose Liberal-Green coalition accelerated the country’s mandatory switchover of all motor vehicles to ethanol fuel and imposed massive new requirements on large private employers to pre-fund their pension obligations. Both of these massively increased the company’s costs, which were already remarkably high with a service area spanning from the Avtovati Isles to Elatana.
In 2015, TavariPost declared bankruptcy, was bought out by Phoenixia’s ultra-wealthy Feriki Dynasty to become Feriki TavariPost, and then spun off again in 2018. The new TavariPost, however, never stopped struggling, and was hampered by the inability to deliver mail on weekends or to deliver at all to rural areas deep in what was then the Tavari far north or the Ranat Plateau. In 2019, it asked for (and was denied) permission to cease delivering to Metrati Anar and the Avtovati Isles altogether, complaining that it was simply too expensive to offer services there. An infusion of cash from the government—making the Ministry of Internal Affairs the company’s largest “private” shareholder in the process—only delayed the inevitable. A planned 2022 launch of financial services products like money orders and savings accounts was scuttled due to the Acronian secession crisis and associated financial panic, and after the Ranat Accords newly independent Acronis and Rodoka both elected to grant their postal monopoly to other entities, leaving TavariPost still saddled with the Union Territories and Elatana, obligations spanning an entire hemisphere of the globe. Observers had long seen the writing on the wall, and overnight Monday, the Tavari Prime Minister reported, TavariPost defaulted on several debt payments and did not have enough cash on hand to meet payroll obligations.
“As a result, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Improvements will assume ownership and control of TavariPost, effective immediately,” the Prime Minister announced at the meeting, while quickly noting that she intended this measure to be temporary. “The Council has agreed in principle for the Union to assume control over TavariPost as an asset held in common, and we will transition to a system where all Union members share in the costs as well as the benefits of the Tavari postal system that, ultimately, was built to serve the entire area anyway.” She noted that the Tavari government would immediately assume and fund the company’s payroll and “immediately outstanding bills” while other details were to be “worked out in the coming hours and days.” It is expected that the currently independent, state-run postal services of Acronis, Metradan and Racatrazi are to be folded into the new, union-level postal service. The Metradani Postal Service already delivers mail in Rodoka and the Isles under a contract. The Acronian government has enacted a “public-private partnership” between the government—which inherited the Church of Akrona’s globe-spanning logistics team and courier staff—and several private commercial logistics firms already operating in the country, primarily UFC-based IlarEx, Inc, which Acronian Chief Administrator Σavora Lašandri said “was always a temporary solution.”
This alone would have made for a monumental meeting, but it was only the first item on the agenda. Metradani President Shtonar Talakar, who will assume the Union Presidency at the council meeting next month, announced during his allotted time that he has issued an executive order to rename the city Anídori, the largest major city in the country’s north, to Argiento, its original name in the Cescolian Norvian language. Cescolians form a majority of the population in the city and have long opposed the city’s Tavari name being imposed as official in place of the Cescolian Norvian name that predates it by several decades. “It is time for the Republic of Metradan to better recognize and celebrate our indigenous Cescolian population. This city, the city of Argiento, is the honorary capital of the Metradani north and the beating heart of the Cescolian community, and we hope that our fellow countries in the Union will join us in recognizing Argiento as the only name of this city,” said Mr. Talakar. The Council immediately and unanimously adopted a resolution doing just that.
The next proposed resolution took significantly more time for the Council to reach an agreement, including more than half an hour spent in executive session. Chief Administrator Kanor Tarelda Voštoi of Racatrazi introduced a proposal to amend Title III of the Ranat Accords, the Charter Establishing the Tavari Union, to allow member states to popularly elect their delegates to the Union Council in the same way that Union Territories do. This was initially opposed by some, including Žarís Nevran Alandar, who explained that negotiators at Ranat chose the current system for a reason. “We sought to ensure self-determination of the peoples of the territories by ensuring that their representation on the Council—which is, ultimately, their sovereign, their collective head of state—is answerable directly to them. Members who are sovereign states do not need a directly elected delegate to ensure their own self-determination, and in fact are better served by the heads of their national government, who are already equipped and empowered to be decisionmakers, on the Union Council,” she argued. She also noted that one outcome the framers of the Accords sought to avoid was one where a national government politically opposed its own representation on the Union Council, which Ms. Nevran Alandar warned could “threaten the efficacy and legitimacy of the entire Union.”
“It must be noted that this body spent considerable time demanding Racatrazi make assurances of the strength of its democracy in order to be admitted to this Union, but when Racatrazi proposes more democracy, it is rebuffed,” Mr. Tarelda Voštoi replied. He explained that in Racatrazi, the debate around the merits of the Tavari Union are very much rooted in concerns that the Tavari are a minority in the country, and that the overwhelmingly Ngodian-speaking, Duarism-worshiping indigenous tiefling population who form a majority have expressed significant anxiety at seeing their cultural identity possibly erased if Racatrazi “pushes too hard or too quickly” in re-integrating itself with the Tavari world. “A democratically elected Union Council Delegate, with a term always fixed to match legislative elections just like in the territories, allows the people of Racatrazi to ensure that a minority government in the Diet cannot sign away their rights,” said Mr. Tarelda Voštoi.
Eventually, it was Racatrazi’s argument that won the day, with the Council adopting an amendment to the Ranat Accords shortly after emerging from executive session. As an apparently compromise, Mr. Tarelda Voštoi’s proposal had been amended in the executive session to state that a member could choose to switch to an elected delegate if a majority of the Council agrees. A resolution introduced immediately thereafter to permit Racatrazi to make such a change at the next occasion they have a national legislative election passed 7-0, with Tavaris abstaining. While much of the debate happened behind closed doors, Metradani President Talakar explained to reporters after the meeting that one point he had made that he said “really changed most hearts in the room” was that, under Metradan’s presidential system, he essentially already is a directly elected Delegate, and he noted that while his party was one of those in government currently, his role was entirely separate from the legislature and, therefore, Metradan’s council representation could theoretically oppose its legislature at any time. Seeming to directly reference the Tavari Prime Minister’s comments, Mr. Talakar also said “we decided it was best for countries to be able to decide for themselves who they are best-served by having represent them on the Council.”
Discussion of democracy continued as Metrati Anar’s delegate, Brõhal Nankar Catti, delivered and read a letter from the island’s Administrator, Edori Navar Tendrokai, regarding the current impasse between the Union Council and Metrati Anar’s local government over a home rule charter. Metrati Anar has twice proposed a charter draft that has been rejected by the Council not for claiming too much power for itself but for seeking to claim too little. “I have consulted with each and every one of our twenty elected legislators, the mayor of each of our municipalities, over half of the various township and municipal board members, and countless members of the public,” said the Administrator’s letter, “and while we are incredibly grateful for the strong commitment to local control shown by the Council, and thank the original negotiators of the Accords for their capable and wise foresight in seeking to protect self-determination, we note that Metrati Anar did not ask for any changes to our system of government, and our democratically determined answer to the Council is that we have decided with our popular sovereignty to respectfully decline your offer of expanded self-determination.” The letter was signed by a supermajority of the Metrati Anar Assembly and majorities of 7 out of the archipelago’s 12 township boards.
The letter only served to further deepen the impasse between Metrati Anar and the Council, which asserted to Del. Nankar Catti that the Ranat Accords were not an “offer” of self-determination but a mutually negotiated treaty that the elected Metrati Anar Assembly ratified and, as Mrs. Nevran Alandar noted, “Edori Navar Tendrokai himself personally participated in the negotiation of and signed.” The Tavari Prime Minister said that the Kingdom of Tavaris is still overseeing schools and public transit in Metrati Anar outside of the Anarís metropolitan area and that it could and would not do so indefinitely. “Metrati Anar cannot simply back out of agreements it duly and lawfully entered into simply because it has discovered that administration can be expensive and difficult,” she said.
The board resolved to add an additional meeting in July to further negotiate with Metrati Anar officials, cutting into what was originally planned to be a three month break in meetings after celebrating the Union’s one year anniversary on June 6th. “We’ll try to have fewer emergency resolutions next time,” Mrs. Nevran Alandar quipped.