2006 Saren presidential election
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The 2006 Saren presidential election was the 12th regularly scheduled decennial presidential election in Saren history, and the 52nd Saren presidential election overall. As has only happened on three occasions, the Saren public was not offered a choice of candidates to elect a President from. This occurred due to the broad consensus within Parliament behind former Prime Minister, Pila Ebadeldar. This marked the first time in over two hundred years that a Saren President has been elected effectively unopposed.
As with previous presidential elections, national news focused on distinguished professors, athletes and senior politicians of broad parliamentary consensus. Over a dozen distinguished Sarens made some suggestion of a candidacy, though none were nominated by the deadline in January 2006.
In mid-2005 expectations had arisen that member's nominated in the year's President's Day honors would include a possible cross-party candidate and Prime Minister Berar Hadiciar implied this would be the case. By November of 2005, the Labor Parliamentary Caucus began drafting former Prime Minister Pila Ebadeldar and suggesting she was the correct, desirable unifying figure to elevate to the role. In early December, the Prime Minister backed her being nominated and by mid-January, half of the Opposition benches indicated she would win their support. Senator Santon Guterressi and former Aegyptian Independent MP Bliyamak Jershan were both nominated by some members of the House throughout January. On January 30, 2006, the Chief Justice of the High Court announced that three nominations were registered and valid. Parliament held it's first secret ballot on February 6, 2006 and Pila Ebadeldar was the only candidate with sufficient consensus to progress to the May election. Both other candidates withdrew before a second ballot could be held the week after to determined if either of them had sufficient support to join her.
Accordingly, on February 13, 2006, after Parliament resolved that there were no other candidates warranting debate, the Saren Electoral Commission declared former Prime Minister Pila Ebadeldar elected unopposed.
Process
The process for the election of a Saren President can be divided into three distinguished parts. First prospective candidates must accumulate sufficient nominations from a combination of ordinary citizenry, and elected representatives. For a nomination to be valid, a member of a provincial parliament, in addition to 2,022 individual Saren citizens from across all provinces must sign a petition of nomination. Petitions cannot begin being signed and filed until July 3 of the preceding year, and the deadline for filing petitions is always January 3 of the election year. Then, once signatures and petitions are deemed valid, the nomination must be seconded by at least three members of the House from the same province, or two members of the House from different provinces, or a member of the Senate from a province 'which the nominee is not a resident or native of'. The High Court has ruled multiple times defining nativity to be subject to interpretation, and has indicated there is no uniform judgement possible. Thus, for most nominees the goal has always been to obtain the secondary support of members of the House where the residency and nativity clause does not apply. In practice nominees will be drafted by sitting MPs and Senators, or seek their support before pursuing petitions from 2,022 individual Sarens. An alternate path exists to bypass parliamentary support, for any individual who can obtain petition support of 0.5% of all Saren Citizens as per the previous census, and at least 0.5% of Saren Citizens in all provinces, as per the previous census. This method has never been used to obtain nomination, though multiple previous presidents and presidential candidates have filed sufficient petitions to suggest they have received this many petitions alongside the more traditional method involving Parliamentarians.
Second, prospective candidates are offered to a joint sitting of parliament on the Monday after the first Sunday in February of an election year, and MPs and Senators indicate their support or opposition to candidates in a secret ballot. Multiple candidates can be supported by MPs and Senators in this sitting. For a candidate to 'progress' they must receive the support of at least two-thirds of the joint sitting in the first ballot. This requirement is dropped to an absolute majority on the second, third, fourth and fifth ballots. For a candidate to progress thereafter, they require simply more support than opposition. A candidate can be 'rejected' at any point if the number of votes declaring opposition outweighs the number of votes declaring support. Third, a public vote held on the third Saturday in May is used to elect the next President.