Niina Hermansdohter
Niina Hermansdohter | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Hermansdohter in 2019 | |
| High Commissioner of the Euclean Community | |
| Assumed office 24 June 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Rasa Šimonytė |
| Euclean Commissioner for Education, Research, Youth and Science | |
| In office 11 January 2010 – 24 June 2019 | |
| Thingspeaker of Azmara | |
| In office 1 August 2008 – 7 June 2011 | |
| Preceded by | Stefan Aansgaarssun |
| Succeeded by | Jon Jorśsun |
| Secretary of State for Internal Affairs | |
| In office 3 May 2003 – 29 September 2005 | |
| Secretary of State for Healthcare | |
| In office 12 January 1999 – 3 May 2003 | |
| Secretary of State for Transport and Communication | |
| In office 1 September 1993 – 12 January 1999 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 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 (Azmaran: [niːnə çɛɹmɑnzdoçtəɹ]; born 20 February 1957) is an Azmaran politican who has served as the High Commissioner of the Euclean Community since 2019 and formerly served the Thingspeaker of Azmara between 2008 and 2011. Ideologically a social democrat variously aligned with the Third Way, the Sotirian left and the soft left at various points in her career, she also served as Transport Minister in the second government of Herman Jonssun between 1993 and 1999, as Health Minister in the government of Jorś Mâþijassun between 1999 and 2003 and Interior Minister in the government of Eleina Helmutsdohter between 2003 and 2005.
She was a candidate in the Socialist Alternative for Euclea primary for the 2022 Euclean presidential election, ultimately being defeated by Vivien Vallette.
Early life and education
Hermansdohter was born on the 20th February, 1957 in Maancester, Groonbank, Azmara to an Azmaran father, Herman Freissun, who worked as a fishmonger, and a Borish-Azmaran mother, Ana Godriksdohter, who had worked at a cotton mill before retiring in 1952 to take care of Hermansdohter's older brother. Hermansdohter's maternal grandparents had moved 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 citizens 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 Azmaran Democrats after the collapse of three-party Gold Flame-Centre-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 Centre Party 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 Centre Party, focusing on their noted opposition to the 1992 introduction of limited recognition of same-sex couples. In an attempt to distance herself from this perceived ambivalence to social conservatism, Hermansdohter unexpectedly pledged to legalise same-sex marriage within Azmara, a promise that would be quickly backed by Helmutsdohter.
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.
Interior Minister
As a gesture of party unity, Hermansdohter would be made Interior Minister within Helmutsdohter's government as the highest-ranking portfolio given to the Workers' Party under the coalition agreement. Notably, as Interior Minister, Hermansdohter would introduce Niina's Law, a bill legalising same-sex marriage, to the Alþing - a free vote would be held on this bill in the Folksmot on 24th March 2004, with the Folksmot voting by 93-44 in favour of legalisation and making Azmara the Xth country to legalise same-sex marriage when it came into effect on November 11th. However, this move and Hermansdohter's liberal approach to immigration, declaring that the country would "welcome with open arms" skilled labourers from Southern Euclea, would drive her into conflict with the more socially conservative wing of her party, with Hermansdohter alienating many of her Sotirian leftist allies with Niina's Law.
Controversies would emerge under Hermansdohter's tenure as Interior Minister over the potential for governments to monitor both SMS and Internet communications as mobile phones and Internet access became increasingly prevalent in Azmara, with the 2004 scandal after it was found that far-right groups seeking to usurp the Commonwealth were using the internet as a forum for organisation and recruitment causing significant controversy over the necessity and ethics of government surveillance and its legality within the confines of 2001 legislation on data protection.
Leader of the Workers' Party
Unpopularity over the decision to coalition with Gold Flame and the grand coalition's economic policies, alongside the early effects of the 2005 Recession, would lead to the Workers' Party receiving their worst performance in their history in the 2005 election - while the party still received the most votes at 23.7% and 37 seats, it would finish little ahead of The Radicals and the Centre Party, who would form a coalition with the Green Party in a coalition that would lead to the resignation of Helmutsdohter as the party's leader.
After the resignation of Helmutsdohter, Hermansdohter would emerge as the natural frontrunner in the resulting leadership election as her willingness to withdraw from the coalition was seen as vindicated by the election defeat. This would be confirmed on the 7 January 2006, when Hermansdohter was elected unopposed as the Leader of the Workers' Party, succeeding Helmutsdohter who officially retired from politics after the announcement of the result. As party leader, Hermansdohter would emerge as the largest opposition voice to the Radical-Centre-Green coalition of Helmut Þurisassun.
As the 2005 Recession continued to plague the country, Hermansdohter would attempt to distance herself from the grand coalition and would move the Workers' Party towards a position more critical of neoliberalism, with her speech to the party conference in November 2006 notably declaring that the party had "turned its back on the working class and the labour movement it was founded to advocate for" in its pursuit of middle class support, pledging for her leadership to "equalise the unfortunately increasingly apparent divides in Azmaran society" and categorically refusing any co-operation with Gold Flame either in opposition or in a future government.
Hermansdohter's Workers' Party would broadly support the Þurisassun government's attempts at fiscal stimulus, with her party's alternative budget proposals in 2006 and 2007 advocating for similar deficit spending on education, healthcare and welfare in order to encourage the growth of aggregate demand, yet would criticise the lack of focus on job retraining schemes within the budgets and would highlight the need for increased financial regulation in the wake of the crash throughout her term in opposition. Hermansdohter would also strongly oppose the government's plans to place a moratorium on nuclear power, with Hermansdohter and many other Workers' Party politicians being active in the campaign to vote against the ban in the resulting referendum for which she received the nickname "Nuclear Niina".
Polling would see Hermansdohter narrowly lag behind Þurisassun as preferred Thingspeaker, yet after his untimely death in December 2007 she would possess a significant advantage on his successor, the Centre Party' Stefan Aansgaarssun. Notably, after his death Hermansdohter would release a statement calling Þurisassun a "principled man who clearly cared about his country" and a photo of her and Aansgaarssun at his funeral would be widely circled, moves that would significantly increase her popularity amongst the electorate.
An early election would be called for June of 2008 in light of the Thingspeaker's untimely death, with Hermansdohter's Workers' Party aiming to run a "constructive" campaign on the Ân Þyyd (One Nation) manifesto, focusing heavily on improvement of public services and state support of the education, science, digital and cultural sectors to bolster growth as well as upon making Azmaran society more inclusive. The similarities between this manifesto and that of Þurisassun's were widely noted in Azmaran media, with the Aalmsted Herald describing the emergence of a "new Bojner compromise" entailing a middle way between the neoliberalism of the 1980s and 1990s and the social democracy of the 1933-1981 period.
Thingspeaker of Azmara
The Workers' Party would see an improvement on its 2005 results in the election, winning 42 seats and 27.1% of the vote. This would cement its place as the traditional largest party in the Folksmot amid fears it would lose it to the Radicals. Emphasising the need for consensus in the time of uncertainty and the rise of populism on both the left and the right, Hermansdohter would reach out to the second and third place Centre Party and Radicals in the months after the election and, aiming for the government to be finalised before summer recess, would be confirmed at the head of a three-party majority coalition on the 1st August 2008.
Hermansdohter's government would feature five ministers from each of the three parties excluding herself - Aansgaarssun was made Deputy Thingspeaker and Interior Secretary, a position he had held between 2005 and 2007, new Radical leader Maþeis Maþeissun would be reappointed as Finance and Economic Secretary and Workers' Party deputy leader Frei Alekssun was made Foreign Secretary. Notably, the six women serving in government would be the highest number of women in an Azmaran government to that point and the Radicals' Wiljâm Askerssun, who was made Culture Secretary, would be the first openly gay government member in Azmaran history.
Personal life
Hermansdohter would meet Caldish civil servant Aodhan Mac Pharláin while working at the Ministry of Euclean Affairs and the couple would marry in 1989. The couple have one son, Frei Niinassun-Mac Pharláin, who was born in 1991, causing headlines as Hermansdohter became the first member of the Folksmot to take maternity leave. A minor scandal would emerge in 2005 as it was discovered that, against Workers' Party policy, Frei would be sent to a fee-paying, private gymnasium. In 2020, Frei would be elected on the Groonbank list to the Folksmot.
Hermansdohter currently lives in Kesselbourg City yet owns a flat in her hometown of Maancester. A practicing Amendist, Hermansdohter attends a small Westmarckian church in Kesselbourg for weekly services and has said that her faith in Jesus Sotirias has "continually inspired her to keep going" and given her "solace in dark times". She is a noted fan of classical music, opera and ballet.