History of the High Kingdoms of Alaxia: Difference between revisions
Content deleted Content added
Line 92:
February to March 2453 would focus on several budget readings in the House of Representatives. The final budget vote took place on 30 March 2453 and would pass 294 to 223. Those voting in favour was the entire governing coalition which would've been enough to pass the bill, but also the entirety of the Alliance Party, Green Party, and Cyn Serilin. The Nationalist parties abstained from the vote. The budget would not be very innovative, only including the barebones spending agreed previously, and saw no major changes. Katelyn Roberts, the Opposition Leader, would scold the government for not including any measures to actually help ordinary people. They would particularly lambast liberals who voted against the free vote, and urged abstainers to consider the benefit for the little costs. President Richelieu signed and passed the 2453 Budget into law on 1 April 2453.
In November 2453, after several months of intense debating to get it right, the legislature passed the Federal Creation of the Independent Royal Commission Against Corruption Act 2453, nicknamed CIRCACA. It would become one of the most important pieces of legislature in the High Kingdoms of Alaxia to this day because of it's everlasting effects. Some historians and political scientists call it as much a part of the bedrock of modern law as the constitution. This new agency, officially a continuation of the Ahitereiran and Koresan neo-collective moment, would be an independent agency to fight corruption. Due to the increase in size in various governmental sectors and corporations, the responsibility of the new commission would be to investigate and eliminate corrupt activities at various levels of administration. While President Richelieu sponsored the bill heavily, the bill actually gave the power to appoint and dismiss the Royal Commissioner to the Premier of the House of Representatives. Bitras would nominate former Ahitereiran prime minister, Rute Franco, to become the first commissioner. The agency was launched fully on 1 January 2454, with Franco's first four-year term to begin there and end on 1 January 2458. The IRCACA had power over all parliamentarians even devolved ones, local provincial leaders, councillors of councils, ministers, advisers, university staff, and employees and officers of public companies. The vote was 494–22.
With a looming presidential election taking place in November 2454, campaigning for Richelieu's re-election would begin as early as March 2454. Having a pretty lackluster reaction to the 2453 budget, Richelieu pushed for a more innovative budget to be passed in 2454 prior to the election year. Richelieu though would also want to save some policy commitments for later. It leaked that Richelieu had privately to advisers said that, "Education reform is important. I would champion education reform. But not in 2453. We have a 2454 presidential election, and a 2455 legislative election to win. And we need a platform to win on. Education is on the agenda circa 2456." which hurt her short term polling, though she recovered as it faded to the background of relevancy. Including in budget discussions ''were'' education reforms in the end, but mostly just subsidiaries given to devolved governments for use on education. In particular, $50 million ($636 million today) was to be specifically given to Peryzium who was very behind on education levels. In fact, a Peryzium research paper released in February 2454 revealed the great shortfalls of education in Peryzium and the need for reform there. The reaction to this revelation was mixed. Some believed that direct government aid would increase funding and therefore levels, others believed Peryzi people were just less intelligent than other people, some believed that Peryzium should domestically make their own reforms there, while others believed this was a reason that education should be united and decided in a federal department. Regardless, one small piece of legislation that passed due to this discovery was the Federal Baseline for Education Act 2454 which established criteria that all education departments in the Peryzi government were mandated to hit. The actual government would determine how to hit this criteria, but they needed to reach a minimum satisfactory level of education or lose certain privileges, protections, or be subject to more vigorous investigations by the IRCACA. The act passed through the House of Representatives very decisively 431–86. The $50 million in aid would be included in the 2454 budget.
The 2454 budget would include a large increase of federal expenditure. Transport would be a focus of this budget, with funding being given to establishing bicycle lanes and setting up traffic regulations to prevent rampant and growing car usage. The regulations around highway building would also be changed slightly with less major highways being built. New rail lines connecting the devolved countries would be prioritised to interconnect the countries further and interconnect rail networks. A bridge crossing the sea from Ahitereira to Peryzium was also announced to be in production, with designing having begun in 2451. The first connection would be rail. The budget would also introduce more accessible credit and introduce financial institution regulations. Richelieu used the motto, "Investment is the core of growth" multiple times promoting the budget. The budget allocated millions to the creation of community centres across the union. The Red Bloq championed transport infrastructure but still pushed the government on the lack of major education reform or socialist values such as nationalisation or welfare. The budget was voted on 27 March 2454 and passed 276–241. Richelieu signed and passed the 2454 Budget into law on 1 April 2454.
It had become very obvious by the middle of 2454 the dynamics of the parties. The government consisted of 273 representatives, the Alliance Party's two members and Green Party of Empherias's single member would nearly always vote WITH the government in key votes. Some coined the term 'quasi-governmental parties' to describe them and how they would vote when predicting legislature outcomes. And consistently, the 13 Nationalist party representatives would boycott the vote and abstain. This meant that usually, only 259 representatives rather than 266 representatives would be needed to pass a bill.
==== 2454 presidential election ====
| |||