Asase Lewa
Bahian Council Republic of Asase Lewa | |
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 Flag
 Coat of arms
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Motto: "Subɔ Ameawo" "Serve the People" | |
Anthem: the Internationale | |
| Capital and largest city | Edudzi Agyeman City |
| Official languages | Asalewan |
| Recognised national languages | Fon Gundaya Kabiye Twi |
| Recognised regional languages | Over 100 Pygmy languages |
| Ethnic groups (2020) | 41.2% Gundaya 17.6% Akan 11.4% Kabye 10.1% Fon 9.8% Ewe 9.9% other |
| Demonym(s) | Asalewan |
| Government | Federal hybrid socialist council republic with party-state elements |
• Presidium of the Section of the Workers' International | List
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• Presidium of the Supreme Workers' Council |
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• General Secetary of the Section | Kwassi Kodjo |
• General Secretary of the Supreme Workers' Council | Name |
| Legislature | Supreme Workers' Council |
| Independence from Estmere | |
• Declaration of the Asalewan Revolution | September 2, 1918 |
• Independence | 1951 |
• Formation of the Bahian People's Republic | May 1, 1953 |
• Formation of the Bahian Council Republic | May 1, 1969 |
| Population | |
• 2023 estimate | 70,636,291 |
• 2022 census | 69,420,396 |
| GDP (PPP) | 2023 estimate |
• Total | $645.40 billion |
• Per capita | $9,137 |
| GDP (nominal) | 2023 estimate |
• Total | $208.45 billion |
• Per capita | $2,951 |
| Gini (2022) | 18.5 low |
| HDI (2022) |  0.737high |
| Currency | Asalewan cedi (external) Work point (internal) (AC) |
| Driving side | left |
| Calling code | +963 |
| Internet TLD | .asl |
Asase Lewa, officially the Bahian Counci Republic of Asase Lewa, is a socialist middle-income country located in northern Bahia and Coius in Kylaris, bordering Tiwura to the south. The third-most populous country in Bahia after Yemet and Mabifia, the country has a population of 70 million, one-fifth of whom live in the capital and largest city of Edudzi Agyeman City.
Like the rest of Bahia, Asase Lewa is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited countries in the world. The country was largely governed according to the egalitarian, communalistic Sâretic system until the tenth and eleventh countries, when the Irfanic conquests of Bahia led to the development of the Houregic system, the first recognizable states, throughout the region. However, Asase Lewa itself largely avoided Irfanization and remained largely Fetishist until the Toubacterie. Furthermore, modern, Houregic states did not develop in the Asalewan Highlands, where between one-fourth and one-third of the population lived; the Highlands instead saw the development of the ojeṣẹbun system[1], a modified version of Sâre. The division between the Asalewan Lowlands, which boasted exceptional agricultural fertility and whose inhabitants frequently fled to the Highlands to avoid state control and associated issues such as forced labor, and the Asalewan Highlands, avoiding state development and whose inhabitants frequently raided or invaded the Lowlands whenever the Highlands suffered from overpopulation, remained a prominent feature of Asalewan society until the twentieth century.
A center, albeit not the most important one, of the Transvehemens slave trade, the Asalewan Lowlands became a major exporter of the cash crops coffee and palm oil, and later cocoa, spices, abd above all sugar, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During and after the Bahian collapse, the Lowlands and an increasingly depopulated foothills and fringe between the Lowlands and Highlands were colonized during the Toubacterie in the nineteenth century. Except in majority-Akan areas in northern Asase Lewa, the Toubacterie had a far more disruptive effect on Lowlander society than elsewhere in Bahia, as the colonial state reorganized Lowlander agriculture and economy for producing and exporting these cash crops under the Asalewan plantation system.
Alongside other Estmerish colonies, Asase Lewa achieved home rule in 1942 and then independence in 1951 under the conservative, pro-Estmere rule of Arko Kwarteng, who established a virtual single-party state by the late 1940s. However, Asase Lewa also saw far more radical anti-colonial movements than other Bahian states. The socialist Asalewan Section of the Workers' International successfully waged the Asalewan Revolution, a thirty-year revolutionary war which emerged victorious in 1953. In the 1950s and 1960s, the new state substantially reduced the Highland-Lowland divide by ending the centuries-long Ojeṣẹbun system through collectivization, established a command economy that made significant progress in economic development, healthcare, and education, and achieved one of the largest reductions in economic inequality in history. However, the Section established an authoritarian political system, first under a tripatite power-sharing agreement and then single-party state, and presided over mass popular killings of dissidents and class enemies Nutiklɔdzo. In the 1960s, crisis triggered by the Sugar Crash and the collapse of the United Bahian Republic, which Asase Lewa was a member of, led Asalewan leader Edudzi Agyeman to launch the Protective-Corrective Revolution, which caused considerable chaos but eventually led to the establishment of a multi-party council republic, and the reorganization of the Asalewan economy under the framework of participatory economics and labor vouchers, supplemented by a large, generous welfare state and rationing-based subsidies for basic goods.
Commentators usually classify Asase Lewa as a hybrid regime and flawed, or Southern, democracy. Criticism of the socialist system is strictly prohibited and monitored by the Revolutionary Communist Construction Committees, and the Section, which no longer participates in elections, retains significant power in Asalean society, most prominently the power to veto candidates, de facto total control over foreign policy, and close integration with the People's Revolutionary. From 1979 to 1984 and 2014 to 2016, military-backed self-coups, a formalized state of exception through the doctrine of Perpetual-Cyclical Revolution, led to mass expulsions of Section members and temporary direct Section control over the country. Nevertheless, elections are considered free and Asase Lewa retains a pluralistic political system, albeit one within the strict confines the Section imposes. Furthermore, the country has—during both colonial and socialist rule—boasted one of the wealthiest, most productive, and most diversified economies in the region, metrics supplemented since the Asalewan Revolution by comparatively high rankings on key metrics of human development such as literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality, and malnutrition, and by one of the most egalitarian distributions of wealth in the world. A member of the Association for International Socialism, the country is closely aligned with other socialist countries, particularly the Brown Sea Community, and is additionally a member of the Community of Nations, International Forum for Developing States, and Congress of Bahian States.
Notes
- 1.^ Portmanteau of ojeṣẹ, the Yoruba word for duty, and ẹbun, the Yoruba word for gift (writing down for myself to include in etymology should I create an article on this later on).