Free Republic of Aegypiinae
The Free Republic of Aegypiinae, abbreviated as the FRA, commonly known as Fluvicola, is a Nyctosporan[1] polity in the Outer Belt.
History
The Free Republic of Aegypiinae has its roots in a group of about 3,000 political dissidents and their families who fled the Democratic Republic of Aegypiinae following the Night of Crushed Eggs in 3135. Following a harrowing six month journey on the Featherfall, an overcrowded cargo vessel hastily retrofitted with passenger modules, the group reached and colonized the Outer Belt dwarf planet known to the Aegypiinaens as Fluvicola[2] in 3136. The leader of the refugees, former Central Committee member Zun ak Roka, then proclaimed the Free Republic of Aegypiinae, charging that the Democratic Republic, having violated the terms of the Aegypiinaen Charter of Rights and Responsibilities, was no longer the legitimate government of the Aegypiinaen people.
The FRA's subsequent history is marked by its diplomatic battle to be recognized as the legitimate Aegypinnaen government, as well as a steady influx of refugees (many of them political dissidents or members of ethnic or religious minorities) from the DRA. Although Extralegal Space recognized it as a member world in 3139, the FRA continues to maintain that, as the government of Aegypiinae, it is part of the Inner Pentarchate, with Fluvicola being an exclave of that region into Extralegal Space[3], and refused to send representatives to the Meetup of Extralegal Emissaries until the Pau ek Utau administration in 3152. Zun remained Committee Chair until 3147, when it was revealed that, in order to prevent herself from being unseated by political rival Loxina ak Vola, she had tipped off Weunese intelligence agencies to a covert visit to Weun Loxina was planning in order to visit her family, which resulted in Loxina being detained by the Weunese authorities and extradited to the DRA. Zun's resignation led to a period of instability that saw thirty-three elections and sixteen different Committee Chairs over the course of twenty-four years, ending with the accession of Poli ak Nauko in 3171. Poli made a number of reforms to the FRA constitution to promote political stability, most notably ending the ability of the Committee Chair to call elections at will, putting an end to the practice Zun had popularized in which Chairs would routinely call for new elections whenever a favored piece of legislation failed in hopes of getting a more favorable legislature. Although this had more or less worked for the popular and influential Zun, her successors usually simply got themselves removed from office by a public sick of their shenanigans, only to be voted back into office less than a year later by a public now sick of the other side's shenanigans. From these reforms, Poli achieved a reputation as a populist reformer, and remained in power despite the increasingly controversial nature of her reforms until the failure of her 3176 referendum to abolish the Central Committee entirely in favor of an executive embodied in a single person, which was seen as a bridge too far and played into her opponents' accusations of creeping authoritarianism. She was succeeded by Lon ik Zoli, who became the FRA's first male Committee Chair, and would serve until he lost power to Zun ak Roka's daughter, Zun ak Zun (commonly known as Zun II) in 3192. Zun II, the current Committee Chair, is notable primarily for taking an even more hardline stance on the legitimacy of the DRA than her predecessors, demanding that the other members of the Pentarchate join the Selfmade Consensus in recognizing the FRA as the only legitimate Aegypiinaen government and agreeing to remove the DRA from power--by force, if necessary. This has proven a major sticking point in attempts to normalize the political situation within the Pentarchate.
Geography and demographics
The majority of the FRA's population of 1,335,000 are concentrated in Fluvicola City (pop. ~840,000), a cluster of habitatation modules from the Featherfall and subsequent refugee ships removed from their vessels and buried under Fluvicola's icy surface to provide shielding from radiation and micrometeorites. Although the FRA claims as their de jure capital that of the DRA, Fluvicola City functions as the polity's de facto capital and seat of government, and is home to the Selfmade consulate and the Weunese and Inokhi diplomatic missions. The remainder of the population is scattered among various smaller cities and mining outposts elsewhere on the dwarf planet, the largest being New Accipiter (pop. ~330,000). The population is primarily Aegypiinaen in origin, although with substantial minorities of Selfmade or Thahanese origin, and is religiously diverse, being home to numerous religious sects and denominations, including the system's largest extant High Ergodicist population outside of Jojerykh'henlek.
- ↑ The question of whether the FRA constitutes a part of the Nyctospora is somewhat contentious, due to its departure from the isolationist foreign policy of most Nyctosporan communities, but I think it can reasonably be categorized as such despite the ways in which it is atypical.
- ↑ The object had no commonly accepted name prior to this settlement, and Selfmade and some Inokhi sources continue to insist on referring to the object by its culturally-neutral Pentarchate Astronomical Society designation of KL-34 for political reasons. The KL-34 designation is also the one most commonly used in the Iridium Throne, due to the fact that it is less cumbersome than the only other term which may legally be used for it in official documents, its traditional name of Varuk Mai's Exceptional Lung Capacity, one of the less catchy of the "biological virtue" names popular with third millennium Thahanese astronomers.
- ↑ A situation with precedent in the form of the defunct Weunese colony of Xhonjara.
- Academician Khalnik (talk) 09:52, 3 May 2019 (PDT)
