Ritchåd Cougnî

Ritchåd Cougnî Former Premier of Auzance and Prime Minister of Auzance
Premier Cougnî in 1977
Premier of Auzance
In office 21 July, 1974 – 24 July, 1988
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	somebody else, probably
Prime Minister of Auzance
In office 19 July, 1970 – 21 July, 1974
Preceded by	Rawoul Lixhime
Succeeded by	Alegzande Nihoûle
Leader of the Labour Party
In office 19 September, 1967 – 24 July, 1988
Preceded by	Andreye Tchûen
Succeeded by	Tâve Fagnrê
Personal details
Born	Ritchåd Djo Cougnî (1916-10-27)October 27, 1916 Remmes, Auzance
Died	January 31, 2003(2003-01-31) (aged 86) Cestiène, Auzance
Citizenship	Autuzian
Political party	Labour (1938-)
Spouse	Tcharlôt Yeyetenne (m. 1940)

Ritchåd Cougnî (born 27 October, 1916) was an Autuzian politician who served as Prime Minister of Auzance from 1970 to 1974, and Premier of Auzance from 1974 to 1988, while presiding as leader of the Labour Party from 1967 to 1988. Identifying as a council communist, he was also at the head of the 1970s reformist movement, and became known for his socially progressive views and legislation passed during his tenure.

Cougnî was born in Remmes in 1916 to an upper-middle-class devout Sotirian family, and grew up speaking Gaullican. Initially associated with anti-independence conservative groups following Auzance's revolution from Gaullica in his late teens, Cougnî renounced these groups in his university years, as well as becoming an atheist. Cougnî joined the Labour Party in 1938 after attending one of its Remmes conferences, and became an active participant; his entry to politics coincided with presiding Prime Minister Remy Warnot's clampdown on opposition, and as such, Cougnî was arrested several times in his late twenties into his thirties for political activities. By the late 1940s, Cougnî had become a key figure in the Labour party speaking for constitutional democratic reforms, and welcomed the downfall of the Warnot government amid the 1948 coup d'état, though the persistent authoritarianism in post-Warnot Auzance displeased him.

The first Labour government, under Yeyete Kinot, was elected in 1955; Cougnî entered the Tchambe for his hometown of Remmes in the same year, and rose quickly, becoming a mid-ranking Cabinet minister in the Treasury department by 1958, when the government lost power. Initially loyal to the party, Cougnî became a key rebel from the party whip in the 1960s under far-left authoritarian Andreye Tchûen's leadership, and became a key contingent of the moderate-left Socialist Democracy Forum within the party - an attempt by the leadership to deselect him in the runup to the 1966 election backfired, destabilising Tchûen and making Cougnî the de facto leader of the progressive opposition.

Cougnî was elevated to the position of Leader of the Opposition in 1967, when Tchûen's resignation as party leader amid a failure to capitalise on anti-government sentiment brought him into power in a landslide against his far-left opponent. As Leader of the Opposition, Cougnî was both an avid speaker, and a keen negotiator, seeking to undermine the National government which commanded a perilously small majority dispersed between four parties. During Cougnî's tenure of less than three years in this capacity, he sat opposite four separate Prime Ministers, with the government's majority eroding completely two months before the election.

Ritchåd Cougnî was elected Prime Minister in the 1970 election's "Labour landslide", precipitating a period of hasty liberalisation of social laws - such as legalising abortion, homosexuality and the creation of a Constitution - before he was elevated to the position of Premier in 1974, in which he served one initial term of two years, and then two full terms of six years, before finally resigning in 1988. Cougnî had remained highly popular throughout, though had to compromise with the Liberal-Progressive government in his final two years following sixteen years of consecutive Labour legislative control. Cougnî also oversaw a period of rapid economic development, with the economy transitioning to accommodate co-operative enterprises and moving away from collectivised agriculture, as well as sustained long-term socioeconomic investment; the 1970s and 1980s as a result were a period of fast and consistent economic prosperity for most Autuzians, the former particularly unusual for a Euclean country - for this reason, Labour's Cougnî-era economic reforms are accredited for Auzance's relative economic prosperity compared to other MASSOR council republics.

Cougnî's legacy as Labour leader, Premier and Prime Minister was widespread, from the Cougnî thaw with East Euclea's liberal democracies, to Auzance's economic reforms and development, and socially liberal democratising reforms that took place during his tenure, the latter particularly in his legislative term between 1970 and 1974, setting Auzance up as a reliable constitutionally democratic state for the first time in its history. Despite these achievements, Cougnî is also blamed by critics for his complacency in later years to the rise of the populist far-right, potentially enabling the National Party to reach power in the 1990s, while his later tenure is seen as less effective by some as his early years as he aged. Cougnî retired from politics in 1988, though came back into a semi-public sphere criticising the far-right Gaspard government of the 1990s, dying in 2003 aged 86.