Niina Hermansdohter
Niina Hermansdohter | |
|---|---|
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| High Commissioner of the Euclean Community | |
| Assumed office 24 June 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Rasa Šimonytė |
| Member of the Euclean Parliament | |
| In office 24 June 2009 – 24 June 2019 | |
| Constituency | Azmara |
| Thingspeaker of Azmara | |
| In office 19 March 2008 – 29 April 2009 | |
| Preceded by | Stefan Aansgaarssun |
| Succeeded by | Frei Alekssun |
| Minister for Health and Social Care | |
| In office 12 January 1999 – 29 September 2005 | |
| Minister for Transport and Communication | |
| In office 1 September 1993 – 12 January 1999 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Niina Hermansdohter 20 February 1957 Maancester, Azmara |
| Political party | Workers' SAE |
| Other political affiliations | Third Republic (1975-1977) |
| Spouse | Aodhan Mac Pharláin |
| Children | 1 |
| Alma mater | University of Aalmsted |
Niina Hermansdohter is an Azmaran politican who currently serves as the High Commissioner of the Euclean Community and was the Thingspeaker of Azmara for a year between 2008 and 2009. Ideologically a social democrat aligned with the Third Way and the Sotirian left, she also served as Transport Minister in the second government of Herman Jonssun between 1993 and 1999 and as Health Minister in the governments of Jorś Mâþijassun and Eleina Helmutsdohter between 1999 and 2005.
Early life and education
Hermansdohter was born on the 20th February, 1957 in Maancester, Groonbank, Azmara. Her father, Herman Freissun, worked as a fishmonger, while her mother, Ana Godriksdohter, had worked at a cotton mill before retiring in 1952 to take care of Hermansdohter's older brother. Her maternal grandfather, Godrick Ingersond, was a Borish farmer and poet, having fled to the border town of Maancester in the late 1920's to escape the Gaullican invasion of Estmere in the Great War, later naturalising as a citizen after Azmara's withdrawal from the Entente.
Hermansdohter attended the West-Maancester Ândeskul for primary education, graduating the ÂSWP in 1971 and enrolling in the Maancester Gymnasium the same year. However, in 1972 when Hermansdohter was 15, her father's suicide after struggling with chronic depression left the family in a very precarious economic situation as their primary source of income had been wiped out and the family had to enrol in unemployment benefits for a few months before her mother could find new work at a laundrette.
This experience is one that Hermansdohter cites with inspiring her interest in politics, saying that while she had studied it at Gymnasium, this awakened her to "the effect that political decisions have on ordinary people's lives", and that seeing the inequality between her and middle-class peers at her Gymnasium "radicalised her".
She managed to graduate from secondary education with high grades in 1975, and was successful at applying for a place on the University of Aalmsted's Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree later that year. Hermansdohter has described her university-age self as a "raving socialist", noting her involvement in the Aalmsted-based vanguard communist Third Republic party during the first few years of her studies and her participation in numerous protests and demonstrations for left-wing domestic and international causes, yet says that under the influence of her demand-side and pragmatic economics and politics professors, she moderated towards positions more mainstream in the Azmaran left.
Early career
After university, Hermansdohter began an apprenticeship with an accountancy firm in her native Maancester, becoming a chartered accountant in 1979 and continuing in this role for a few years. However, she resigned from the position in 1983, citing a dissatisfaction with the work and a feeling her degree was not being adequately used.
Soon after, she started working for the Department of Pensions and Social Welfare, being responsible for processing welfare cases in the Province of Ostlaak, resulting in her moving from Maancester to Kyningsmer, the largest city in the province. Hermansdohter has cited this work, being responsible for processing welfare payments to many of the town's residents who had been made redundant as its coal industry started to go into decline, as prompting her to become interested in national politics again, having become disinterested after university. As a result, she became a member of the Workers' Party and started to become active in national politics.
In 1986 she switched government departments to the Department of Euclean Affairs, and as a result becoming involved in Euclean diplomacy, being on many Azmaran delegations to Euclean Community discussions, summits and conferences. Hermansdohter has cited this as being partially behind her Euclofederalist political positioning, saying that after experiencing first hand the work that the Euclean Community did and the importance of unity across the continent.
Early political career
Hermansdohter occupied the ninth place on the Workers' Party list in Ostlaak in the 1987 election, yet as the Workers' Party won eight seats she was unsuccessful in being elected to the Folksmot. However, despite the Workers' Party suffering a defeat in 1990, Hermansdohter was successful in her attempt to be elected, as the Workers' Party still won seven seats in Ostlaak and Hermansdohter occupied the sixth place on the provincial list.
As one of the few MPs that constituted the party's new intake in 1990, she became associated with the party's shift to the centre and its rebranding under the banner of "professional socialism", advocating for an acceptance of the neoliberal policies of current Thingspeaker Aarne Leifssun while working to improve public services and welfare programs within the context of this. However, she was more sceptical of this approach than other new MPs such as Eleina Helmutsdohter, advocating for the party to roll back restrictions on trade unions and strengthen the practises of collective bargaining and tripartism while many advocated for the party to accept a decline in the power of unions.
When the 1993 election came around, Hermansdohter was one of many relatively new politicians recruited by party leader Herman Jonssun to help write the party's manifesto, with Hermansdohter being placed in charge of writing the party's policies on infrastructure, advocating for an overhaul and modernisation of the country's transport and communications networks.
Ministerial career
Minister for Transport and Communications
Upon the party's victory in the 1993 election and the successful formation of a coalition with The Radicals and the Democrats after the collapse of three-party Gold Flame-Sotirian Democrat-Radical talks collapsed, Hermansdohter was inaugurated as Minister for Transport and Communications as Herman Jonssun returned to the position of Thingspeaker.
While serving in this position, Hermansdohter successfully enacted many of the aspects of the overhaul and modernisation she had promised, authorising the building of Highway 47, a new highway connecting the cities of Stajnensby, Wylijen and Nordberg, allowing for greater connection of the latter city to the central region of Azmara, and engaging in a project to renovate the Coastal Line, a train line running between Nordberg and Ostby-an-de-mer and providing service to many of the nation's coastal towns.
While these two moves were very positively received, other moves of hers were criticised. Notably, she made significant efforts to improve connectivity in the Province of Ostlaak, authorising the use of large sums of government investment money to improve the travel infrastructure of Kyningsmer, its largest city, and to provide services between many of the province's former mining towns. Highway 48, providing a fast road link from Kyningsmer to the province's second largest city, the university town of Wucing, was also authorised. While Hermansdohter defended these moves as being in order to provide suitable transport links to an area of the country with less developed transport, she received many accusations of pork barrelling for these moves as people accused her of acting to maintain her party's hold on the province.
After the government successfully saw re-election in the 1996 election, a new issue came up for Hermansdohter's ministry to act towards: rolling out infrastructure to allow for the increasing mass use of the World Wide Web. A large infrastructure spending program to bring broadband connections to many of Azmara's largest cities was authorised, and was very successful; by the 1999 election the program had led to 66% of Azmarans possessing internet access.
Minister for Health and Social Care
After the resignation of Herman Jonssun and the consensus election of Jorś Mâþijassun as the Leader of the Workers' Party and thus Thingspeaker of Azmara, Hermansdohter was reshuffled from the Transport and Communications portfolio to the Health and Social Care portfolio in a move widely considered to have been a promotion.
The new government declared the health services of Azmara to be a major priority, announcing its intention to increase funding for services and to ensure extended availability of services. Therefore, the coalition government adopted an agenda of reform to Azmara's healthcare system, with Hermansdohter's ministry encouraging increased government spending on healthcare infrastructure through increased subsidisation to both private and public hospitals covered by Azmara's universal social insurance scheme and schemes to increase the amount of general practitioner clinics across the country. This agenda would be coupled by a controversial policy encouraging "internal marketisation" after the formation of a grand coalition with Gold Flame after the 2002 election, increasing the amount of competition between different hospitals and general practitioner clinics was set up as Hermansdohter's ministry moved to introduce league tables and ratings for hospitals at the recommendation of Gold Flame.
2003 Workers' Party leadership election
The Helenagate scandal would emerge in February 2003 as it was found that Helena Alekssun, the wife of Thingspeaker Jorś Mâþijassun, ran a company that benefitted heavily from a government apprenticeship and vocational training program. Hermansdohter would release a statement with other ministers from both parties, including then-Environment Minister Eleina Helmutsdohter, stating that they had no knowledge of the scandal in question.
As further details emerged over the next month, it would lead to threats from Gold Flame to pull out of the coalition and trigger a no confidence vote - ultimately, this would lead to the resignation of Mâþijassun on the 19th March and a leadership election within the Workers' Party. Two days after this, Hermansdohter would announce her intention to stand in the leadership election, and as nominations closed on the 26th March it was announced she would face off against Helmutsdohter and Hjalmar Jonssun, a representative from Nordberg heavily associated with the left of the party.
Jonssun was largely written off by the media due to a low profile, yet as a poll on April 1st showed him in second place and Hermansdohter in third, Hermansdohter would start to court the left of the party, making a promise to pull out of the grand coalition and try and form a government with either the Radicals or the Sotirian Democrats and to pursue a more interventionist policy of regeneration in the areas the vocational training and apprenticeship program was meant to target.
The promise to pull out of the coalition, however, would be criticised by Helmutsdohter, who would equate Hermansdohter's known observance of Sotirianity with the socially conservative stances of the Sotirian Democrats, focusing on their noted opposition to the 1992 introduction of limited recognition of same-sex couples. While Hermansdohter had voted in favour of this move, Helmutsdohter referred to this support as "token" and branded her as a "social conservative". In an attempt to dispel these accusations, Hermansdohter declared her support for same-sex marriage in a move that shocked many and was welcomed by LGBT groups in the country.
When the party membership voted on the 27th April, Hermansdohter would gain 38.1% to Helmutsdohter's 40.7%, with the remaining 11.2% going to Jonssun. This meant that on the 3rd May, Helmutsdohter would become the first female Thingspeaker of Azmara.
Foreign Minister
As a gesture of party unity, Hermansdohter would be made Foreign Minister in Helmutsdohter's cabinet. This role would see Hermansdohter display her passionate pro-Eucleanism and partake in many summits with other politicians from across the continent. Notably, she would focus heavily in the relationship between the small states of the Euclean Community and as such would be an active promoter of the "Euclea of Regions" idea of a confederal Euclea designed to prevent domination by Estmere, Werania and Gaullica and would notably work to foster relations between the "Alsbora" group, developing a strong working relationship with her peers in Alsland and Borland.