Eðe Saima
Eðe Saima | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Minister of Public Works of Gylias | |
| In office 2 January 1958 – 5 March 1976 | |
| Prime Minister | Darnan Cyras |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 29 May 1923 Tomes, Xevden |
| Died | 1 January 1989 (aged 65) Mişeyáke, Mişeyáke, Gylias |
| Political party | Labour Solidarity League |
Eðe Saima (29 May 1923 – 1 January 1989) was a Gylian politician. She was Gylias' public works minister in the Darnan Cyras government. She oversaw the vast public works projects of the National Obligation period and Golden Revolution, which had a long-lasting impact on Gylias' economy and society. She was additionally famed for her flamboyant personality and glamorous public image, making her one of the cabinet's most popular ministers.
Early life
Eðe was born on 29 May 1923 in Tomes. She came from a poor family of mixed Gylic descent, and had an older sister, Ejeni. The destitution of her childhood and resulting indignities left a profound mark, and contributed to her devotion to public housing in government.
She was educated at home and, after her family took refuge in the Free Territories, in volunteer classes. She was described as a hyperactive student, prone to exhibitionist tendencies that at times grated on her lecturers and colleagues.
She took on a variety of jobs from the age of 18 to support her family. One of these was acting, prompting her sister to quip, "Eðe has the soul of a frustrated film star trapped in the body of a politician."
She joined the People's Army in 1945, and took part in the liberation of Tomes — a lifelong source of pride. In the PA, she fought on the front, distributed pamphlets, acted in propaganda films, and took part in sabotage operations against enemy supply lines. She remained in Tomes after its liberation, transitioning into organisational duties. She served in her neighbourhood's communal assembly and was chosen as a delegate to the General Council.
Her service in the General Council's Reconstruction Commission gained her a reputation as a talented and strong-willed administrator, capable of arbitrating between different priorities. Towards the end of the Liberation War, Darnan Cyras invited her to join the post-war Executive Committee, with responsibility for the public works portfolio. She accepted the offer.
Minister of Public Works
Eðe took office with the rest of the Executive Committee on 2 January 1958. Her post was retroactively renamed "Minister of Public Works" when the Constitution was adopted in 1961.
Her early tenure coincided with the National Obligation period. She wasted no time initiating nationwide reconstruction and public works projects, now able to proceed without wartime constraints. The sheer scale of the program helped stimulate the economy and keep unemployment down, warding off the danger of recession.
As minister, Eðe worked closely with communal assemblies and local governments in realising public works. She went beyond standard public comment processes to make communal assemblies responsible for drafting and approving plans. Her approach at the Ministry of Public Works favoured setting goals, maintaining momentum, and creating an environment of friendly competition with herself as final arbiter. One favourite method was to invite multiple proposals for a construction project, and step in at the end of community discussion to suggest some kind of amalgam for the final plan.
She was passionate about providing a decent living for Gylians through high-quality public housing. She was an influential ally of the demopolitan movement, whose tenets matched her own priorities regarding urban planning, and a fierce opponent of anything she considered totalitarian architecture, including the International Style, brutalism, and high modernism. She championed Art Deco architecture, and welcomed Arxaþ and Alţira's preservation of Alscian buildings.
Over her term in office, Eðe oversaw millions of public works projects throughout Gylias. She helped make the public sector the largest employer in Gylias, contributing to full employment, and helped advance the radical changes of the Golden Revolution. Gylias' infrastructure and public utilities were greatly expanded, with nationwide electrification, water supply and sanitation, harnessing rivers for hydroelectricity and irrigation, and transportation networks.
Her oversight of public works contributed significantly to Gylias' improved quality of life indicators, and benefited its economy by attracting tourism and migration. She directed the building of lavish monuments and facilities to instill pride in Gylians during the Golden Revolution, such as the Anca Déuréy University campus in Narsiad, the National Archives of Gylias building in Mişeyáke, and numerous lavish railroad stations, public parks, swimming pools, cultural facilities, and so on, contributing significantly to the image of "public luxury".
She closely collaborated with transport minister Kōichi Nishida in shaping Gylian transportation policy. She strongly disliked cars, and thus emphasised railroads, ferry services, and airports as the main means of connecting cities. She made sure that Gylian cities had well-developed public transport systems, and helped preserve several cities' trolleybus and tram networks, which she found "charming".
She and Kōichi worked together on the Grand Design, published on 29 February 1968. This was an ambitious transportation plan that envisioned a massive expansion of metro systems in cities and the use of high-speed rail to connect all cities, at a time when GNRTS had just completed its first high-speed rail line. She pushed hard for its implementation, securing the completion of a second high-speed rail line and several metro lines in large cities by the end of her tenure; much of the Grand Design would ultimately be realised by the Mathilde Vieira government.
Public image
Eðe complemented her ministerial work with a reputation for a flamboyant personality and glamorous public image. She was known for her sharp wit, patrician accent, and penchant for affectionately referring to everyone she met as "dahling", with a long Latinate [aː] that would become much-imitated. She had a husky voice and a habit of dressing in vintage Alscian clothing, reinforcing her eccentric air.
She often played on her image to advance an agenda, such as humorously exaggerating her genuine hatred for "the nightmare called modern architecture". She jokingly remarked, "Architects should be treated like cattle"; her light-hearted mockery of the profession contributed to an absence of "superstar architects" in Gylias since architects' work was subordinated to the needs of the communities who planned and approved building projects.
Ejeni believed that her sister's public image was influenced by her childhood poverty in Xevden, and thus served as a form of revenge against past oppressors — an assessment most biographers and commentators agreed with.
Together with Julie Legrand and Birgit Eckstein, Eðe formed the chahuteuses ("rowdies"), a group in the cabinet famed for their flamboyant personalities and bonne vivante lifestyles. Several of her colleagues joked that she, Julie, Rin Tōsaka, and Aliska Géza formed a cartel that shaped cabinet meetings and agenda, acknowledging their vital contribution and high esteem among the cabinet.
Eðe and Julie were close friends, and at the same time engaged in a light-hearted rivalry in public, owing to their similarly showboating personalities and complementary ministerial posts. Eðe joked that she joined the Labour Solidarity League because Julie was already a member of the Democratic Communist Party, and thus there was no room for "two impossible publicity hounds" in the same party. Eðe and Julie's humorous insult matches and contests of sharp wit served as highlights of cabinet meetings, entertaining their colleagues. Akane Tsunemori remarked in her diary, "They were inseparable friends who happened to be constantly at each other's throats."
Eðe lived an unhealthy lifestyle, unabashedly so. She was a heavy drinker, smoker, and drug user. Her regular physical activity and work as minister helped keep these habits under control, and she was seen as a "functional addict". She quipped, "Cocaine isn't habit-forming and I know because I've been taking it for years." Her doctor recalled that after she woke up from an emergency five-hour hysterectomy that nearly killed her, she stood proudly and said, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"
She identified as pansexual and was romantically linked to many notable personalities of the day, including having a one-night stand with writer Anaïs Nin. The columnist Esua Nadel delighted in covering Eðe's escapades precisely because of her "unruly", larger-than-life image, playing a role in creating her "elegantly wasted" public image; the same habits often caused frustration to press secretary Eva Gardiner.
Later life and death
Eðe's term in office ended with the inauguration of the Aén Ďanez government, in which she refused to serve. She had been a member of the Senate for Tomes since 1962 and was reelected in 1976, although her fall from 1st to 15th place in first preference votes reflected the vulnerability of the Progressive Alliance in the wretched decade.
Deprived of influence and a governmental role, she suffered a physical and emotional decline. She gave up smoking after being hospitalised for emphysema in 1977, but continued to drink and take drugs. She stood down at the 1980 federal election.
Now out of politics, her last years were marked by continued health struggles. She suffered a heart attack in 1984, after which she was fitted with a pacemaker. She managed to ultimately overcome her addictions, but was physically weakened in her last years, and lived with her sister Ejeni in Mişeyáke.
She died on 1 January 1989 in a Mişeyáke hospital, of pleural double pneumonia, complicated by emphysema, malnutrition, and possibly a strain of the flu. Her last coherent words were reportedly a request for bourbon whiskey; when informed of this, Ejeni remarked, "She died as she lived."
Legacy
Eðe was a significant figure in the Golden Revolution, and one of the most popular and influential ministers of the Darnan Cyras government. Her high-profile oversight of public works helped cement them as a key component of the Gylian consensus and economic policymaking, while her championship of demopolitanism aided its ascent to dominant influence in Gylian architecture and urban planning.
Her public image similarly attained an influence in Gylian political culture and pop culture, being much-referenced, parodied, or imitated. Her friendly rivalry with Julie Legrand inspired rezy pioneers Irène LeRoi and Remi Ďana, while her image served as an inspiration for the archetypal nénédie heroine. Future Prime Minister Mathilde Vieira was also seen as having fashioned her public image to an extent after Eðe's, particularly taking after Eðe's bonne vivante personality and quizzical facial expressions.
Private life
Eðe's headstrong and rebellious personality meant she was more interested in lust than love in relationships. She married once, which ended in divorce, and had no children.
She was primarily a practitioner of Concordianism.