Saving the RepublicPolitical Forces Unite to Stave Off CollapseMay 4367"It's a bit like holding back the waves of the sea, is it not?" So said Ardeshir Xwarrah a newly elected member of the National Divan from Somasi. Going by Aldegarian history, Xwarrah was correct - the survival of a republic is quite unlikely going by the country's history. Republics tend rely on a seemingly non-existent majority for secularism, liberalism and social equality. In the past the leading conservative forces particularly the Yazdean clergy have watched with horror as republicans win, ride roughshod over them and burn out swiftly. This has happened with the current republic which is just shy of its twenty year anniversary.
President Kaveh KermaniThis time, according to Xwarrah, things will be different. His Aldegarian National Congress was founded as a broad front uniting republican forces on the left and centre-right. As extremists started dominating the republic in the form of communists and theocrats, Xwarrah himself a man of the centre left, saw his and the republic's future in compromise. Thus he, many others like him answered Kaveh Kermani's call for a "great republican pole" and joined the new party as soon as it was formed. Kermani, the republic's new President was once as radical as it got, driven by the idea of destroying the Yazdean priesthood's power. Yet age and the chaos of early reform in the republic convinced this former mayor of Tamaddon, a midsized northern city famous for its liberalism, saw that only gradual reform could be be durable reform.
It appears most of his fellow citizens agree. Kermani easily won the presidency and his party swept the legislative elections as well. Taking care to make few specific promises, Kermani simply asked for a mandate to "save the republic" He promised a new republic of balance, one where the republic did not mean punitive action against conservative forces, where the instinctive conservatism of the Aldegarian people was not a disease to be cured but rather an asset to be exploited. They should be seduced to accept republican values rhater than forced. The only big reform he has outlined clearly is the introduction of a semi-presidential system, a system which Kermani and his party hope will allow the legislature to play a greater role and grow as a pillar of the republic in its own right.