Aén Ďanez
Aén Ďanez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Prime Minister of Gylias | |
| In office 5 March 1976 – 30 May 1986 | |
| President | Reda Kazan Len Resis Sáe Nyran |
| Preceded by | Darnan Cyras |
| Succeeded by | Filomena Pinheiro |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 February 1915 Arcyk, Xevden |
| Died | 15 September 1989 (aged 74) SQA in Salxar, Gylias |
| Cause of death | Declared dead in absentia |
| Political party | Democratic Communist Party (1946–1956) Radical Communist Rally (1956–1960) Revolutionary Workers' Party (1960–1989) |
Aén Ďanez (19 February 1915 – declared dead 15 September 1989) was a Gylian revolutionary and politician. She served as Prime Minister of Gylias from 1976 to 1986. She was a leading cause of the wretched decade, and was ultimately toppled by the Ossorian war crisis.
Aén came from a family of Aðunese farmers, and became involved in left-wing politics from an early age. She was arrested for anti-Xevdenite activism, but pardoned during the 1400 Days' Reform. She became a statist communist, strongly influenced by Adélaïde Raynault. She initially joined the Democratic Communist Party, but was expelled during the Lucian Purge, and then joined authoritarian formations, eventually becoming the leader of the Revolutionary Workers' Party.
A largely marginal figure during the Golden Revolution, she unexpectedly became a leading candidate in the 1976 federal election, and led the Revolutionary Rally to a narrow plurality, winning the same number of seats as the Progressive Alliance. Following lengthy negotiations in a hung parliament, she formed a minority coalition comprising the Revolutionary Rally, Progressive Alliance, and Independent Regional Alliance for Minorities, and took office on 5 March 1976.
Aén sought to push Gylias towards a more statist leftist model. Little of her agenda became law, due to the backlash caused by her confrontational approach and a fractious government marred by bitter rivalry between the RR and PA. Nevertheless, she was a disruptive presence in Gylian politics, and managed to mobilise a base of support that kept her in office.
Her term in office was marked by multiple crises, subsequently known as the wretched decade: economic destabilisation, deterioration of public services, and worsening foreign relations. She benefited from opposition disunity to win re-election in 1980, but lost in 1985. She remained as a caretaker, pending formation of a new government, but tried to abuse this mandate and govern as if she'd been re-elected.
The outbreak of the Ossorian war crisis galvanised the opposition, and she lost office on 30 May 1986 to Filomena Pinheiro. She was subsequently convicted of abuse of office, crimes against society, and crimes against the public peace, and sentenced to expulsion from the community in a social quarantine area, and was declared dead in absentia on 15 September 1989.
Aén is universally considered Gylias' worst Prime Minister since the Liberation War due to her central role in the wretched decade, negative impact on Gylias' reputation abroad, and nearly causing a war with Ossoria. The concerted crackdown carried out by Filomena destroyed the RR as a political force, reducing it to the marginal status it had before Aén.
Early life
Aén Ďanez was born on 19 February 1915 in Arcyk, a village now located in Aðuna. Her parents were farmers, and had officially converted to salvationism to gain citizenship, but did not practice in private. She received a clandestine education.
She was arrested for anti-Xevdenite activism in 1933, aged 18, but received a pardon during the 1400 Days' Reform. She moved around Xevden, taking a variety of menial jobs to support herself. Her parents would later move to the Nerveiík Kingdom, and died at the hands of the Tymzar–Nalo regime.
Liberation War
Aén's service during the Liberation War is a matter of conjecture and controversy, as she tried to fabricate a biography that better suited her ambitions.
She initially moved north to join the People's Army rebellion, but she arrived after the General Declaration of 12 March 1938, which proclaimed the Free Territories. She tried to join the PA under a pseudonym, but was rejected.
She left the Free Territories and spent many years in territory contested by various Gylian factions. She claimed to have led a guerrilla organisation with a strength of 5.000, but this account is considered a lie. She is confirmed to have been a participant in the overthrow of the the Impresa di Chieti in 1947.
She joined the Democratic Communist Party under her real name, but found her career stalled by tensions within the "alliance of convenience". She was mainly assigned to marginal roles. She spent much of this time as an assistant to Adélaïde Raynault, to whom she was fanatically loyal. She once admitted, "If Adélaïde had told me to throw myself into a fire, I would've done it."
Aén's marginalisation embittered her against the DCP, which became a lifelong grudge. She was expelled during the Lucian Purge of 1956. She then joined the Radical Communist Rally.
Legislative career
Aén was elected to the Popular Assembly in 1958, on the Radical Communist Rally list. She later clashed with the party's leadership and left in 1960 to establish the Revolutionary Workers' Party. The party was organised along vanguardist lines and was strongly focused around her leadership. It became part of the Revolutionary Rally electoral bloc in 1961.
The RR did poorly in 1962 and 1969: it was shut out of the Senate, won only 5 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and only 2 went on to be re-elected. Aén was generally an undistinguished deputy, and not particularly active. She made the mistake of condemning the "anarchaos" protests of 1968, and in return the LSD Party ridiculed her as a "reactionary dinosaur" during the 1969 campaign.
After the disastrous 1969 federal election, Aén became the leader of the RR. With only 2 deputies, it was one of the smallest blocs in Parliament, and her low profile led her to be seen as a "has-been" and an irrelevance.
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, the Movement for Emancipation and Democracy overshadowed the RR as a prominent, leader-centric formation to the left of the Progressive Alliance. Aén was inspired by its success and studied Maria Elena Durante's methods closely, coming to duplicate her left-wing populist rhetoric. When Maria Elena died in 1972, the MED fell apart and much of its support would be absorbed by the RR.
Prime Minister of Gylias
Aén unexpectedly benefited from the disarray caused by Aliska Géza's death before the 1976 federal election. With the incumbent Progressive Alliance–Liberal Union alliance demoralised by the loss of its front-runner, Aén played down her statism and campaigned with somber rhetoric that struck a chord with voters alienated by the PA's perceived focus on social engineering. She managed to win over previous MED voters, and took a "populist–ascetic" line, attacking the Golden Revolution for fostering a "red elite" and neglecting the working class.
The election produced a hung parliament: the RR won a plurality of first preference votes in the Chamber of Deputies by less than 9.000, and finished with 84 seats, the same as the PA. However, it finished second-to-last in the Senate, with only 39 seats. Her first attempt to propose a coalition with the PA failed, while Lea Kersed's suggestion of a grand coalition was sunk by arguments over who would become Prime Minister. Aén's second attempt saw the PA drive a hard bargain, forcing her to make numerous concessions, and the Aén Ďanez government took office on 5 March 1976.
Governing approach
Aén's cabinet, a coalition between the Revolutionary Rally, Progressive Alliance, and Independent Regional Alliance for Minorities, was compromised from the start.
The RR and PA despised each other, an enmity dating back to the Liberation War and Lucian Purge. The PA had largely entered the coalition as a last resort, and its aim was to "restrain" the RR. For that purpose, it had taken a tough stance in negotiations and had kept control of key ministries. These included the Economy, Finance, and Planning and Development ministries, and they went to such lengths to exclude the RR that Aén often didn't know what was in her budget until the annual budget speech on 1 March.
For its part, the RR reciprocated the antagonism, and in symbolic ways sought revenge for the anarcho-communists' triumph in the Lucian Purge. Many of Aén's allies shared her grudge. The ill-will within the government became so bad that President Seşas Ríseu, although having been nominated by the RR, privately rebuked Aén during meetings with the cabinet, and pleaded with ministers to overcome their differences, to no avail.
The IRAM, limited to the Ministry of Equality and Integration, frequently complained about being caught in the middle of the RR–PA rivalry.
Aén's public profile was also a drastic departure from her predecessor Darnan Cyras, known for his rejection of conventional leadership and consensual role within the cabinet. Aén brought a more leader-centric approach, holding press conferences and making declarations by herself, dispensing with the services of a press secretary. The conflicts within the cabinet became public, and this weakened the PA as it was split between "coalitionists" and "oppositionists".
Her confrontational style and inflammatory rhetoric caused conflicts with civil society, communal assemblies, municipal and regional governments. However, at the same time they rallied and hardened her core support, allowing her to survive attempts to recall her from office.
Domestic policy
Aén sought to move Gylias towards a more statist communist model. She disdained the anarchist heritage of the Free Territories, feeling that it made society "weak". Many former Darnan Cyras government luminaries who had refused to remain in her cabinet described her as having authoritarian sympathies, and she made no secret of her admiration for the former Ruvelkan Socialist Republic.
Her agenda included greater industrialisation of Gylias, a move to centralised planning, and having the state take a leading role over the National Cooperative Confederation and General Council of Workers' Unions and Associations. None of it made it into law. Her initiatives were repeatedly rejected in referendums — including amending the Constitution to declare Gylias a "socialist republic", converting the GSDF into a military, abolishing the Senate and expanding public ownership.
Despite failing to get her agenda passed, Aén's chaotic governance caused the protracted crises of the wretched decade. Her attempts to meddle with cooperatives and planning destabilised the economy, while incompetent ministers and government infighting caused a deterioration in public services, particularly of the Hermes Programme. Growth rates fell before bottoming out in a protracted recession in 1982–1986. Average prices crept up, unemployment increased to a peak of 12% in 1983, and Gylias' balance of payments deteriorated. The þaler was destabilised and fell against other currencies, creating a dual exchange rate and putting pressure on its participation in the Common Monetary System.
Aén has been blamed by many historians and commentators for destabilising Gylian politics, as her inflammatory style as Prime Minister and the wretched decade caused backlashes that emboldened previously marginalised extremist forces, including the far-right Front for Renewal of Order and Society and right-wing populist "molehill parties".
Foreign policy
Aén harboured ambitions to establish Gylias as a leading leftist state in Tyran, at odds with its small population. She felt that Ruvelka was unwilling to commit to world revolution, and this left an opening for Gylias to attempt that role.
Her confrontational posture caused damage to Gylias' foreign relations, even with its closest allies, and trade declined. Its previously prominent role in the Common Sphere lapsed into stagnation. International suspicion of Aén's government led to a period of relative diplomatic stagnation and isolation.
Aén lent support to various groups perceived as "revolutionary", ranging from the Labor Underground and far-left insurgency in Delkora to the Ossorian Republican Faction. In 1984, she concluded the Neyveli Agreement with Mansuriyyah, by which the Gylian government would accept "undesirable" Mansuri deportees in exchange for cash payments, which were kept secret and funneled towards the Republican Faction.
Minority and downfall
Aén managed to retain a plurality in the 1980 federal election, having run a "decapitation" strategy that urged RR supporters not to preference the PA at all. Her government was rejected on an initial parliamentary vote, but the PA failed to approve Lea Kersed's grand coalition and was forced to return to the Aén cabinet.
The RR–PA struggle ended with Aén expelling the PA from the coalition on 21 March 1983. This reduced her government to just the RR and IRAM, and a clear minority in Parliament. In practice, it was a death blow, but the opposition chose to wait until the next federal election, smarting from the failure to constitute a grand coalition and the PA's humiliating exit. This was the period in which Aén undertook her most secretive actions, the most infamous being establishing a secret slush fund, concealed from the government and administrative agencies, and providing support to the Republican Faction.
Aén led the RR to a loss in the 1985 federal election, although it still finished third and the result was a severely hung parliament, much to the public's frustration. She remained a caretaker pending the formation of a new government, which was stalled by extensive negotiations and opposition disunity.
The Ossorian war crisis erupted on 20 May 1986 when Ossoria revealed Aén's support of the Republican Faction. The confrontation nearly led to war breaking out between Gylias and Ossoria, only halted by the veto of High King Nevan III. The crisis galvanised the opposition, which toppled the Aén government on 30 May 1986, replaced with a national unity cabinet led by independent deputy Filomena Pinheiro.
Trial and death
Aén was arrested immediately after her term as Prime Minister ended. She was put on trial, along with most of the RR cadres, and charged with abuse of office, crimes against society, and crimes against the public peace.
Her trial, one of the showcases of Filomena's extensive crackdown on the RR and FROS, proceeded rapidly due to overwhelming evidence, and was marked by a heated atmosphere similar to the Arnak Trials. She was convicted of all charges on 15 September 1986, and sentenced to expulsion from the community.
She was removed to a social quarantine area in Salxar — a symbolic final insult from the PA, as Salxar was where the Free Territories had been founded. She was declared dead in absentia on 15 September 1989, in accordance with standard legal procedure, although given her weak health and advanced age, she is believed to have died earlier.
Legacy
Aén's legacy in Gylias is overwhelmingly negative. She is universally considered the worst Prime Minister of Gylias due to her central role in the wretched decade and nearly causing a war with Ossoria.
Her successors Filomena Pinheiro and Mathilde Vieira notably acknowledged that the wretched decade had exposed previously unnoticed flaws in Gylias' political system, and used both overcoming the wretched decade and preventing its recurrence to rally support for their reforms.