Oskar Askerssun
Oskar Askerssun | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President of the Centre Party of Azmara | |
| In office 22 April 1945 – 1 September 1952 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Freidrik Helmutssun |
| Member of the Folksmot for Westmaark | |
| In office 1 October 1939 – 1 September 1952 | |
| Secretary of State for Agriculture | |
| In office 15 October 1932 – 1 October 1933 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 June 1891 Groons, Westmaark, Azmara |
| Died | 1 September 1952 (aged 61) Stefansburg, Aalmsted, Azmara |
| Political party | Centre Party (1945-1952) Freethinkers' Party (1925-1945) National Association (before 1925) |
| Spouse | Mariina Isaksdohter (m. 1909) |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Mideltuun Boys High School |
| Profession | Writer, politician |
Oskar Askerssun (19 June 1891 — 1 September 1952) was an Azmaran writer, political theorist and politician who served as the first leader of the Centre Party, to which he is often considered the ideological father. He also served as a Member of the Folksmot between 1939 and his death in 1952.
Early life and career
Oskar Askerssun was born in 1891 in the northern Westmaark town of Groons. His father, Asker Isakssun, served as the priest of the town's church, while his mother served as a folksskul teacher. Due to his father's ecclesiastical role, Askerssun was able to obtain secondary educationat the then-Church of Azmara-run Mideltuun Boys High School as a boarding student.
After graduating in 1909, Askerssun would marry Mariina Isaksdohter, a student at the corresponding girl's school and acquire a job teaching at a folksskul in Mideltuun. Over the next decade and a half, he would teach at both this school and schools in rural nearby towns including in his native Groons, during which time he would begin writing. Askerssun's early outputs consisting largely of short stories about Azmaran rural life inspired by the country's romantic and realist literature trends, many of which found their way into the Jeśehten fân Groons ("Stories from Groons") collection published in 1917.
Askerssun's writings would lead to him developing an interest in political matters in order to alleviate the conditions of the rural poor and would join the Sotirian-inspired progressive National Association.
Early political activism
Askerssun would help campaign for the party in northern Westmaark in the 1918 and 1921 elections and would venture into political essay writing, resulting in a 1923 collection titled Þahten fân Groons ("Thoughts from Groons") in which Askerssun described effects of the Great Collapse in Azmara and detailed his criticisms both of the laissez-faire policies of Azmaran governments before 1921 and of Nemtsovism and councilism. Despite this, Askerssun was a cautious supporter of the coalition government between the councilist ADAA and the National Association, noting that if the latter "moderated" the former's "Nemtsovite excesses" then "significant progress" could be made on "eradicating rural poverty".
After the rise of the National Coalition to power, Askerssun would find himself cast in the role of a political opposition leader, becoming a key figure in the new Freethinkers' Party formed by the splinter of the centrist wing of the National Association as its socialist wing merged with the majority of the ADAA into the Workers' Party. In response to what he and many other opposition politicians considered a crackdown on civil liberties by the government and alignment with the Functionalist government in Gaullica, Askerssun would attempt to organise a united opposition front to help defeat the National Coalition in the 1927 election yet this would be to no avail and the government would be re-elected amid a red scare.
In the face of Azmaran entry into the Great War on the Gaullican side in 1929 and further crackdowns on civil liberties culminating in the suspension of the 1930 election, Askerssun would temporarily flee the country with his wife and children to Werania fearing for his personal safety. Residing in Westbrücken, Askerssun would publish the essay and short story collection Ân Handeling âb Wiþerstejen ("An Act of Resistance") in 1931, a work harshly critical of National Functionalism and right-wing authoritarianism he would later describe as his "magnum opus".
With the outbreak of the 1932 General Strike in Azmara leading to the downfall of the National Coalition and the country's withdrawal from the war, Askerssun would return, being appointed as Minister for Agriculture in the provisional government of Hjalmer Alekssun as the new government rewrote the constitution and re-entered the war on the anti-Gaullican side. However, Askerssun would not stand in the 1933 election and would resign from office, stating that he needed a "retreat" from political life, declining an offer from his party to stand in the 1934 presidential and 1936 legislative elections.
During the late 1930s Askerssun would publish two more short story compilations which would branch out in themes to explore romance and historical fiction - 1936's De Raad Foogel ("The Red Bird") and 1938's In Hindsiht ("In Hindsight").
Parliamentary career
Askerssun would ultimately accept a request from his party to run in the 1939 legislative election, stating a concern that the Azmaran political scene would become "monopolised" by the Workers' Party-Radical alliance who had won large majorities in the past two elections and who he described as "too rooted in urban concerns" to address a significant swathe of the nation.
Topping the poll in Westmaark province, Askerssun would become one of the leading voices of the opposition to the governments of Hjalmer Alekssun. Askerssun would continually emphasise his opposition to the government as being "respectful and constructive" and would seek bipartisan solutions on areas of mutual agreement such as the introduction of universal secondary education and integration into the United Nations of Euclea, while criticising the government's industrial policy of nationalisation and state planning of significant portions of heavy industry as overly centralising power.
Askerssun was also a noted critic of the government's welfare reforms, noting that while he saw a "more generous pensions and social insurance system" as a "necessity", he saw what he termed the government's "one-size-fits-all" approach as "dangerous", arguing instead for a sectorally stratified system as developed by Sotirian democratic parties in other countries.
After his re-election in the 1942 election, Askerssun would work for greater collaboration of the forces to the right of the government, forming an alliance with the agrarian Farmers' Party citing their similar focus on the interests of rural Azmarans and presssuring the leadership of the Freethinkers' Party to co-operate further with the party. In 1944, a merger proposal heavily supported by Askerssun would be put to both parties, arguing a need to "unite the centre" of Azmaran politics between the socialism and radicalism of the government and the laissez-faire of other opposition party Gold Flame.
This merger proposal would succeed and at an inaugural conference for the new party it would adopt the name of Centre Party of Azmara and elect Askerssun as its first leader, committing to an agrarian platform influenced by Sotirian humanist, liberal democratic and civic nationalist doctrines. The newly-formed party would achieve second place in the 1945 election with 17.3% of the vote and 26 seats, resulting in Askerssun becoming the formal Leader of the Opposition.
As opposition leader, Askerssun would continue his attitude of "constructive opposition" towards the government. A foreign policy consensus referred to as the "Third Force" (Azmaran: Þreidenkraft) with Thingspeaker Alekssun and his successor Mâþijas Aansgaarssun which supported strong relations with the liberal democracies of eastern Euclea as a bulwark against the growth of councilism and right-wing authoritarianism. This consensus was a driving force between Azmaran participation in the Solarian War and the Euclean Community.
Askerssun would also work with Thingspeaker Aansgaarssun on a bipartisan commission to reform Azmaran healthcare to ensure universal provision. The proposals from this commission would ultimately become the modern-day Universal Healthcare Insurance Scheme, enacted in 1951, and would take the form of a single-payer insurance system while hospitals themselves would remain independently run, a feature inspired by the Centre Party and Askerssun's opposition to state monopolies.
The Centre Party's vote and seat share increased significantly in both the 1948 and 1951 elections, with the 1951 election returning 34 Centre Party representatives and bringing Aansgaarssun down to a minority government tolerated by the continuing faction of ADAA.
Death and funeral
Askerssun had been known to suffer from ill health in the final years of his life which he often attributed to the "polluted air" of Aalmsted. In truth, he had been diagnosed with cancer in 1949, a fact which he had asked his doctor to conceal from the public so he could "continue public service". While able to carry out his duties for the rest of the parliamentary term and during the 1951 election, his condition severely worsened after the election and he had a high absence rate in the 1951 Folksmot as a result, leaving Freidrik Helmutssun to deputise for him as opposition leader often.
After a worsening of his condition, he would die on the 1st September 1952 at his Aalmsted residence in the presence of his wife and two daughters.
Askerssun's funeral was held on the 15th September at Aalmsted Cathedral and was attended by many senior politicians including President Henrik W. Þurleifssun, who had served alongside Askerssun in the Provisional Government, Thingspeaker Mâþijas Aansgaarssun, former Thingspeaker Hjalmer Alekssun and Helmutssun, who had succeeded him as Centre Party leader.
Personal views
Askerssun's personal views have been widely judged to have stemmed chiefly from his desire to alleviate the conditions of the Azmaran rural poor, his Westmarckian faith, a romanticist conception of Azmaran nationalism and a commitment to democracy and human rights.
Askerssun was a strong believer in the founding principles of the Commonwealth of Azmara, professing in 1927 that the "republican, secular and liberal democracy" developed by Mikel Hankssun was the most laudable achievement in the nation's history - despite his strong personal faith and religious-derived ethics Askerssun strongly opposed the notion of a state church, describing such a concept as a violation of the Westmarckian concept of "free will".
Askerssun was an opponent both of free-market capitalism professed by Gold Flame and the socialism professed by the ADAA and later the Workers' Party, seeing both systems as "based in the concerns of urban classes", the former serving the burijer class and the latter serving the urban poor to the detriment of other groups in society. Askerssun instead viewed class collaboration as important, stating in Ân Handeling âb Wiþerstejen that "burijers, intellectuals, labourers and farmers" all had a role to play in society and that the government had a role to balance and negotiate the interests of the four classes and ensure none of them were too powerful.
Askerssun supported a large role for small business and co-operatives in the economy and thought the government should intervene to prevent monopolies both by private and state-owned enterprise, seeing both as detrimental to national wellbeing and concentrating power in the hands of too few individuals. Some have described Askerssun as a distributist due to an emphasis on spreading power over the means of production in his writings.
In Þahten fân Groons, Askerssun professed his support for the first wave of Azmaran feminism, stating that he saw "no reason why [his wife] should not be considered legally equal [to himself]", and expressed opposition to the death penalty, describing it as "barbaric". He was also a consistent advocate for temperance and prohibition, with Þahten fân Groons describing the government's duty to "crack down on the vices of the Azmaran poor" such as alcohol, gambling and prostitution.
Some modern-day writers have described Askerssun as a eugenicist due to writings where he argued that children should not be conceived "by families that cannot support them", identifying large families as a "key problem" facing the rural poor, yet others have disputed this.
Legacy
Askerssun is widely commemorated in modern-day Azmara for his work opposing functionalism and rural poverty. Two years after his death, Askerssun's Centre Party would form Azmara's first centre-right government since the Great War in a coalition with Gold Flame, with Helmut Freidrikssun serving as Thingspeaker. In his first address as Thingspeaker, Freidrikssun paid a tribute to Askerssun, stating it was a "great tragedy that [Askerssun] never got to fulfil this role". The government's focus on a social market economy and a social policy inspired by a Sotirian humanist outlook were directly attributed to the views laid out by Askerssun, and he remains a key ideological influence on the party into the modern day.
Askerssun has come to be appreciated as one of the great contemporary writers in the Azmaran language - Jeśehten fân Groons and Ân Handeling âb Wiþerstejen were added to the Azmaran Studies curriculum in 1986 in an attempt to include 20th century literature in schooling. This move received some critics due to the political nature of his works, yet in a response Education Minister Riita Hermansdohter stated that the work's "key values" of "standing up to oppression, injustice and inequality" were "not inherently politically partisan" and noted the inclusion of work by socialist writers such as Henrik Aarnessun on the curriculum.
Many Askerssun's descendants have followed his literary and political pursuits - his eldest daughter, Lena Askersdohter, served as a Folksmot representative for Westmaark between 1957 and 1975 and as Education Secretary between 1960-1963 and 1966-1969, while his son, Herman Askerssun, was active as a children's author in the 1960s and 70s. Two of his grandchildren currently serve in the Althing - his granddaughter Karla Johanssun as a Landsmot representative for the Farmers and Traders constituency and his grandson Siimun Hermanssun as a Folksmot representative for Ostlaak.
Bibliography
- Jeśehten fân Groons (1917)
- Þahten fân Groons (1923)
- Ân Handeling âb Wiþerstejen (1931)
- De Raad Foogel (1936)
- In Hindsiht (1938)