A Summary Of The Frigga Crisis(*)
Posted by: FnordFnordFnord
In: r/FenPoliticalRoundup
(*) Because "incredible clusterfuck for which they only have themselves to blame" is a bit of a mouthful.
Okay, so! I've been doing roundups on the whole thing between Venus and Frigga for the SMOFcon mailing list for the last little while now, and apparently people like my meat & sarcasm enough that they asked me to explain all this nonsense for the general public. At the moment I've got nothing else on my plate save political trainspotting, so why not? Everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
First off, some background:
The main reason this is coming to a boil *now* is that the last year has not been a good one for the Kayabuki government. There've been a couple nasty kickback scandals involving Party-In-Government backbenchers from Crystal Titusville, you can read all about those in the Daily Illuminator, and those were *embarrassing*, but the really *damaging* news has been coming out of the terraforming office. VTP has revised their estimates upward three times in the last twelve months: according to the latest models surface terraforming won't be Earth-normal before 3200 CE, even with heavy handwavium use.
"Okay, so what?" I hear you ask. It's not like VTP was going to be done next week or anything, right? Well, true enough, but Kayabuki's government got into office on the back of the terraforming project. "Surface By 2150!" was the Party-In-Government's rallying cry last election, and now it looks like they won't be able to deliver. Add to that the kickback problems and that Serenity II is noticably cooler to Kayabuki on a personal level than Serenity I and well... the Loyal Opposition smells blood in the water. If Kayabuki's going to fend off opposition attacks *and* prevent new elections she needs more friendly backbenchers in Parliament.
Which is where Frigga comes in. The Venusians have a tendency towards using subject habitats outside Venus orbit as rotten burroughs, pretty much sinecures for second daughters and campaign contributors to add bulk and texture to Parliament. A nasty habit but when you're coslifing as the British Empire in Space some things are almost inevitable. Anyway, Kayabuki's been sending out loyal Party apparatchiks to Frigga to stand for MP for the last eighteen months now, and so far the residents have rejected every single one of 'em.
Part of the problem is that Venus doesn't grok that Frigga isn't a remote mining outpost where the locals are too busy working, drinking & whoring to care about the government--Frigga's a full-fledged community. Using the place as a sinecure comes off as an insult to the Friggans, who have their own concerns that they (rightly) believe deserve hearing in Parliament. So the Friggans have been engaging in the voting equivalent of a sit-down protest by refusing to vote for anyone other than "None of the Above" whenever Venus sends a new slate of candidates.
The *other* part of the problem is that the native Friggans are caught in a nasty catch-22 about citizenship. Frigga's a relatively new settlement, and one that was annexed to the Millenium rather than a direct colonization. Venusian citizenship laws don't really have precedent for annexation, so pretty much most of the population is ineligible to stand for election.
In theory this could be solved by direct appointment of the major stakeholder as feudal overlord. It's been done before, the Duke of Aphrodite Terra got the name when his mining balloon evolved into a proper town. The thing is, this would involve the cooperation of the major stakeholder and, well... that's kind of an issue. Jet Jaguar's an unreconstructed cyberpunk who set Frigga up as a haven for like-minded cyberpunks, and I believe that her utter *horror* at becoming "The Man" keeps her from accepting the position, no matter how much easier it'd make life for her people.
So we've got a government that demands an MP, a population that can't stand for MP and a would-be noble who refuses the responsibility, and thus we have the impasse.
Well, we *had* the impasse. Yesterday Parliament delivered an ultimatum to Frigga's governing council: Accept direct rule, force the Queen to intervene, or we just send the Sammies in and do things the hard way. And just to show that Kayabuki is officially done fucking around they waited until most of the governing council was out of the system before delivering the ultimatum. What's really interesting is that the Party-In-Government and the Loyal Opposition seem to be united in this: The opposition may not like Kayabuki or the way she runs things, but they like the asteroid colonies passive-aggressively thumbing their noses at Crystal Tokyo less.
What happens next? My little birds tell me the Friggans are scrambling to dump the old council and elect a new quorum in time to respond to the ultimatum. If they pull that off, it's likely a question of which stopgap option they choose. My best guess is they'll ask the Queen to appoint somebody--Serenity II's a Belter, so in theory she'll be sympathetic to their plight--and odds are good she'll appoint Jaguar or one of her inner circle as Baroness Frigga. But that's ultimately a stopgap; the issues preventing proper representation are stil there and still effect Frigga and other outlying habitats. Parliament will either fix the law or watch all the Senshi holdings outside Venus orbit break away and join the Autonomous Alliance, the Jovians or one of the Belt mutualist groups out there, Kayabuki's government self-immolates and we see a sea change in Venusian government for the first time in ten years.
Ought to be fun either way.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Posted by: FnordFnordFnord
In: r/FenPoliticalRoundup
(*) Because "incredible clusterfuck for which they only have themselves to blame" is a bit of a mouthful.
Okay, so! I've been doing roundups on the whole thing between Venus and Frigga for the SMOFcon mailing list for the last little while now, and apparently people like my meat & sarcasm enough that they asked me to explain all this nonsense for the general public. At the moment I've got nothing else on my plate save political trainspotting, so why not? Everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
First off, some background:
The main reason this is coming to a boil *now* is that the last year has not been a good one for the Kayabuki government. There've been a couple nasty kickback scandals involving Party-In-Government backbenchers from Crystal Titusville, you can read all about those in the Daily Illuminator, and those were *embarrassing*, but the really *damaging* news has been coming out of the terraforming office. VTP has revised their estimates upward three times in the last twelve months: according to the latest models surface terraforming won't be Earth-normal before 3200 CE, even with heavy handwavium use.
"Okay, so what?" I hear you ask. It's not like VTP was going to be done next week or anything, right? Well, true enough, but Kayabuki's government got into office on the back of the terraforming project. "Surface By 2150!" was the Party-In-Government's rallying cry last election, and now it looks like they won't be able to deliver. Add to that the kickback problems and that Serenity II is noticably cooler to Kayabuki on a personal level than Serenity I and well... the Loyal Opposition smells blood in the water. If Kayabuki's going to fend off opposition attacks *and* prevent new elections she needs more friendly backbenchers in Parliament.
Which is where Frigga comes in. The Venusians have a tendency towards using subject habitats outside Venus orbit as rotten burroughs, pretty much sinecures for second daughters and campaign contributors to add bulk and texture to Parliament. A nasty habit but when you're coslifing as the British Empire in Space some things are almost inevitable. Anyway, Kayabuki's been sending out loyal Party apparatchiks to Frigga to stand for MP for the last eighteen months now, and so far the residents have rejected every single one of 'em.
Part of the problem is that Venus doesn't grok that Frigga isn't a remote mining outpost where the locals are too busy working, drinking & whoring to care about the government--Frigga's a full-fledged community. Using the place as a sinecure comes off as an insult to the Friggans, who have their own concerns that they (rightly) believe deserve hearing in Parliament. So the Friggans have been engaging in the voting equivalent of a sit-down protest by refusing to vote for anyone other than "None of the Above" whenever Venus sends a new slate of candidates.
The *other* part of the problem is that the native Friggans are caught in a nasty catch-22 about citizenship. Frigga's a relatively new settlement, and one that was annexed to the Millenium rather than a direct colonization. Venusian citizenship laws don't really have precedent for annexation, so pretty much most of the population is ineligible to stand for election.
In theory this could be solved by direct appointment of the major stakeholder as feudal overlord. It's been done before, the Duke of Aphrodite Terra got the name when his mining balloon evolved into a proper town. The thing is, this would involve the cooperation of the major stakeholder and, well... that's kind of an issue. Jet Jaguar's an unreconstructed cyberpunk who set Frigga up as a haven for like-minded cyberpunks, and I believe that her utter *horror* at becoming "The Man" keeps her from accepting the position, no matter how much easier it'd make life for her people.
So we've got a government that demands an MP, a population that can't stand for MP and a would-be noble who refuses the responsibility, and thus we have the impasse.
Well, we *had* the impasse. Yesterday Parliament delivered an ultimatum to Frigga's governing council: Accept direct rule, force the Queen to intervene, or we just send the Sammies in and do things the hard way. And just to show that Kayabuki is officially done fucking around they waited until most of the governing council was out of the system before delivering the ultimatum. What's really interesting is that the Party-In-Government and the Loyal Opposition seem to be united in this: The opposition may not like Kayabuki or the way she runs things, but they like the asteroid colonies passive-aggressively thumbing their noses at Crystal Tokyo less.
What happens next? My little birds tell me the Friggans are scrambling to dump the old council and elect a new quorum in time to respond to the ultimatum. If they pull that off, it's likely a question of which stopgap option they choose. My best guess is they'll ask the Queen to appoint somebody--Serenity II's a Belter, so in theory she'll be sympathetic to their plight--and odds are good she'll appoint Jaguar or one of her inner circle as Baroness Frigga. But that's ultimately a stopgap; the issues preventing proper representation are stil there and still effect Frigga and other outlying habitats. Parliament will either fix the law or watch all the Senshi holdings outside Venus orbit break away and join the Autonomous Alliance, the Jovians or one of the Belt mutualist groups out there, Kayabuki's government self-immolates and we see a sea change in Venusian government for the first time in ten years.
Ought to be fun either way.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"