Coup by Chancellor

Former Chancellor Stijn has performed a coup d'etat in Victoria last friday. He was unsatisfied by the inactivity of the government and the latest legislation of the Victorian senate, which reduced the Chancellor to a powerless puppet. Further he wanted to stir up the activity in "Philip Locke" fashion. Finally he was worried that senate chairman Spetsnaz had access to his account on Mayo.

15 minutes after his coup, Stijn retreated from Victoria, placing the burden of rebuilding the state on fellow administrator Willem. The main point of discussion in the rebuild is a new election of the senate, for the third time in the two-month history of the nation. Unsurprisingly, the former opposition is in favor of a new election, whereas the parties in the government are against it.
Another point of discussion is the position of the chancellor. Because of its current powerless nature, no-one seems to be wanting to run for the chancellor elections, which became necessary after the retreat of Stijn, so voices go up to abolish the position altogether and have a state without a head-of-state.

Links:

Coup by Stijn
Retreat of Stijn

Victoria now a Republic

After elections and re-elections, Victoria has finally a legitimate senate consisting of 2 members of the communist party, and 1 member each of the liberal LVP, the nationalist RNP and the centrum-left democrats (CLGD). As had to be expected, the first action of the new senate was to amend the constitution in such a way that Victoria is no longer a principality but a republic. Former prins Willem has accepted the will of the people and stepped down, after a reign of 12 days (27th of August until teh 7th of September). The new head of stead will be a chancellor, elected by the people of Victoria. Until the end of the first chancellor elections on the 16th of september, Willem will stay head of state as interim-chancellor. He has indicated that he will not run for the position. The new official name of Victoria is the Democratic Republic of Victoria.

Short news from the Dutch sector

Charlotta does not recognize Mayo
(source: NOIN)

The Charlottan government does not recognize the independent regio Mayo. Mayo used to be a region of Charlotta and had seceded after the communists took control of Charlotta. Charlotta regards Mayo still as a rebellious province and want to place it back under Charlottan control. If necessary, they will use military force with or without help of the Red Antilles and the USSR. The Red Antilles does not recognize Mayo either, but refuse to give any military support. There has been no reaction of the USSR so far.

Politburo in the RA elected
(source: NOIN)

Gentenaar and Spelev have won the elections for the politburo in the Red Antilles. The politburo is the legislative and executive branch of the Antillian government. Spelev has been elected to lead the Foreign Affairs department. His plans are to get contacts and embassadors in as many nations as possible. Gentenaar has been elected as home affairs official. He has set up the Antillian economy, leads the reform movement "democratization" and moderates the people's tribunal.

Region Mayo takes off
(source: NOIN)
After a quiet start, the region Mayo is taking off. A temporary government has been appointed that will stay in effect until the citizen base has reached 10 people; then elections will be held. 10 people seems to be ambitious, but is not outragious: Victoria currently has 16 citizens and the RA even around 30. One of their first achievements is the start of the Vrije Universiteit Mayo (Free University Mayo), where you can register for courses Spanish and Political Sciences. The courses will be given in Dutch, though.

The Victorian way of elections

Victoria has voted, but, typical for micronations, nothing is decided. The elections would have been won by the communist MLP with an overwhelming majority, gaining 53 % of the votes and 3 seats in the senate, while the other 2 are equally divided between the liberal CLGD and the republican LVP. However, the discussion rose as whether micronationalist Sander Dieleman was or was not member of Victoria and therefore was or was not eligible to vote. The investigations in this matter was severely complicated by two factors:
- Victoria had moved from a board on bbfree.com to invisionfree.com. This has proven to be a good step since the former was down most of the time since the move, but you cannot find evidence on a board that is inaccessible.
- The complete citizen base was involved in the matter in one way or another, leaving no-one qualified to judge
Fortunately, Sander himself indicated that he had never applied for citizenship, so the consensus has become that the elections will be done over, without Sander Dieleman and with the two people that have applied for citizenship since the last elections. It is expected that the result of the new elections will not be any different, except that hopefully everyone accepts the results. In the middle of all this confusion, prince Stijn announced that he stepped back from the throne in favor of Willem. According to Stijn, he did not have the time and energy anymore to fulfill his job as prince and forum admin properly. Prince Willem I will probably be one of the shortest reigning monarchs in micronational history, since it is expected that the first move of the new senate will be to amend the constitution in such a way that the principality of Victoria becomes the republic of Victoria.
There is also positive news from Victoria. After three weeks of negotiating between Willem, communists and royalists, Victoria has decided on a flag: a white V for Victoria, 3 yellow stars on a red background to keep the communists happy and a blue band for the non-communists. The final flag now proudly waves on top of the forum:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/Victoria

Election time in Victoria

Elections approach in the fairly new micronation in Victoria and will be held from the 22nd to teh 28th of August. Two issues are dominating the elections debate. One issue is the happenings in Charlotta on the 3rd of august, when the communist party took control of Charlotta by hacking into the account of the forum owner, Charly, also know as RepubliekCharlotta. Most non-communist citizens emigrated from Charlotta and moved to teh newly created Victoria. However, a few members of the Charlotta communist party moved to Victoria as well. The debates usually start with accusations about Charlotta and end with the problems and merits of communism in general. The the pro and contra-communism discussion seems to have quieted down a bit as both parties have found a new enemy in recently joined ultranationalists.
The other hot issue is the discussion about the monarchy: two of the Victorian parties want to dismantle the monarchy and strongly favor a republic. The other party supports the monarchy, but they seem to be in a minority at the moment. It is rather unclear whether the ultranationalists (whose party was founded too late to take part in the elections) are against the monarchy as institution, are only against prins Stijn or are against everything in general. And all this happens during the absence of prince Stijn (VictoriaPr) who is currently on holidays and will be back on the 20th.
In short, interesting times are ahead in Victoria.

Noorderzon goes Blog

Notice from the Editor

After three editions the editor-in-chief of "De Noorderzon" has decided to put out an international edition for the international community. He hopes that this newspaper can bridge the language barrier and provide the international community insight in the workings of Victoria and the recently started Dutch micronational sector.