Defender elite subvert TSP election

Defender elite subvert TSP election

While the Chair of Assembly elections may not be the most glamorous, generally being overshadowed by the cabinet elections, the election this October revealed a new tactic from TSP’s Defender elite, which should worry both TSPers and outside observers alike.

RON (Re-open nominations) is a long term TSPer, who has repeatedly tried to get elected in a variety of positions with little success. It seemed his commitment to the region was being ignored, but that all changed a couple of months ago, when he stormed to victory with 21 votes (72% of the total) in the Chair of Assembly election. Then something strange happened. The election was re-run from the start. RON was forced to run against new candidates, along with some he’d already beaten. This time, he unfortunately came up short, taking 13 votes after the 3rd round of IRV (instant runoff voting) to his opponent’s 15. This seems anti-democratic and corrupt enough, but The Southern Onion has done some research, and the information we have found reveals just how worrying these events are.

Firstly, there was very little acknowledgement of RON’s victory. After the voting ended, Election Commissioner Feirmont announced ‘With Re-Open Nominations taking the win, the elections will return to the nomination period.’ No congratulations. No acceptance of him as the legally elected Chair. Just an immediate rush to run the election again. Whether Feirmont is part of the Defender conspiracy, or whether he was blackmailed and threatened by it we don’t know, but either way, this was a dark day for democracy in TSP. RON hasn’t been seen since this second election, and has every right to feel aggrieved, but it gets worse…

Who would possibly want to run against the fair victor? Sure, the losing candidates might want another chance, but surely nobody who didn’t run before would possibly take this unfair opportunity? Step up, Glen-Rhodes. Glen is a prominent Defender and is widely considered to be a leading member of TSP’s Defender elite. It should come as no surprise that he was the one chosen to snatch the position away from the rightful victor. In what The Southern Onion can only consider to be a sham election, Glen defeated RON and the other candidates by the narrowest of margins. Now that the Defender elite had got the outcome they’d wanted, the result was allowed to stand.

There’s one final piece of information, which really is the icing on the cake with regards to the injustices done to RON, and TSP as a whole during this travesty of an election. Glen-Rhodes had originally campaigned for RON. Yes, that’s right, the man who took away RON’s first ever victory had originally claimed to be supporting him. RON is a shy, quiet person, and rarely gets involved with campaigning, so when Glen took it upon himself to campaign on RON’s behalf, everyone thought he was being nice, and helping out a deserving candidate. How wrong they were! Glen’s campaigning was merely a way of mocking RON, as he knew that regardless of the result, only one person would ever truly win this election. To trick RON into thinking that he finally had some support after all these years was nothing short of immoral. It could even be said that this support was because he knew that, out of all the candidates, the timid RON was the least likely to complain about the situation.

In conclusion, TSP’s Defender elite have not only subverted our election process, effectively re-running an election until they got the result they wanted, but they misled a poor candidate into believing he would win his first election. Depraved. Corrupt. Deceitful. And this is just the start. No doubt the Chair of Assembly election was just a way for them to test the waters, to see if they could get away with election fraud, and its success will only make them hungrier for future subversion. The future does not look at all bright for TSP’s democracy.