Faking Democracy

[Nentsia]

Mstsislavsk - the Republic of Nentsia
1581

''We are the People! We are the People! We are the People!'' chanted a crowd in a square near the Mstsislavsk State University. Ihar Litvinchuk was one of the students in the square, like many others, carrying a little Nentsian flag. Ihar was, like so many of his friends and fellow students, sick and tired of the endemic corruption levels in his country. Everything in this country required some form of bribery to get it done. A visit to the doctor? Bribe the doctor first. Want to avoid getting pulled over by the police? Bribe the cop. Want to get a train ticket? Sold out! Unless you pay a bribe. Want to get into university? Pay a bribe. Want to graduate from university? Pay a bribe! Not to mention the absurd amount of money the politicians were stealing and storing in secret bank accounts in tax havens such as Magentina and Batavia.

The immediate reason for the students to hold their protest in front of the university was the raise of the college fee, a decision by the ~absolutely corrupt~ Rector Magnificus. His decision would force several students from poorer families to quit their studies. Other students wanted to demonstrate their solidarity at this social injustice, especially because everyone knew the money disappeared in the pockets of a criminal elite. But for Ihar and his friends, Oleg, Artyom, and Yanya, it was bigger than that. This was a protest against the systematic injustices and corruption in the country, and above all against the man who embodied that system: President Vynnychuk.

President Vynnychuk had been practically married to power. He first led the country since 1561. He won a second term in office in 1565. He then changed the constitution to enable himself a third term in office, which he entered in 1569. By 1573 he was forced to hand over the presidency, and he did so by selecting one of his loyal servants (Stanislaw Zhyrovitsky) to preside over the country while Vynnychuk and his clan controlled everything in the background. It was during this period that the first major anti-corruption demonstrations broke out, and Vynnychuk's criminal daughter was arrested in Khibland and extradited to Mordvania for her role in a fraud case involving Mordvanian politicians, Nentsian politicians and criminal gangs. Perhaps because he feared that control was slipping from his hands, Vynnychuk forced Zhyrovitsky to resign after just one term in office so that Vynnychuk could run for presidency in 1577. In the months before the election campaigns began, the authorities launched a well-planned assault on the political opposition, independent media, and democratic institutions in order to destroy any real possibilities of challenging Vynnychuk in the elections. The election campaigns were manipulated to such a degree that the actual rigging of the elections wasn't even necessary for Vynnychuk to win by a landslide.

The opposition, led by Mikita Martsinkyevich, held a demonstration against these undemocratic practices on the night of the election results. The government's response, feeling strengthened by the overwhelming support of the voters, was ruthless. Heavily armed police troops encircled the demonstrators in the square and charged at the people, driving the crowd apart, arresting anyone they could lay their hands on and violently beating people up. Not even Martsinkyevich - a member of the parliament - was spared. He was so badly molested that he ended up with a coma in the hospital. He recovered from his injuries, and fled into exile to Mordvania. As if that wasn't enough already, the pro-Vynnychuk deputies in the parliament (Rada) used the uproar as a pretext to initiate a ''Ban on Extremism'', in which ''Extremism'' was so vaguely defined that it can be used to suppress any form of dissent. Ihar fully understood that this demonstration could fall under the Ban on Extremism, and the police troops could arrive on the scene any moment to violently put an end to it.

The timing of the demonstration was quite sensitive. It was 1581. Vynnychuk's 4th term was almost finished, and he had announced his intention to go for a 5th as the elections were scheduled for 1581. Unlike the 1577 elections, these elections did not require a great deal of manipulation. All real political opposition had ceased to function. In 1577 the government had already weakened the opposition by literally faking the opposition. What they did was they either infiltrated opposition parties, or they bribed prominent members, and they let them cause a split in the party and set up an exact copy of that opposition party - with the only difference being they were loyal to the regime. As opposition parties fought in the streets with their fake counterparts, nobody understood anything anymore. Their support declined, and the opposition parties that survived were all satellite parties, controlled by the security services. So now the 1581 elections were nothing but a sham: Vynnychuk vs fake opponents. These were not elections, they were just a ratification of Vynnychuk's continued presidency. And after 20 years the Nentsians were far from the end of the Vynnychuk reign: Aliaksei was probably grooming his criminal daughter, Ksenia, as his successor.

Ksenia Vynnychuk had been given a mild punishment by the Mordvanian courts, in a trial that was accompanied by diplomatic conflicts and all kinds of dirty, and even illegal games being played by Ksenia to escape the Mordvanian justice system. Her attempts failed, and she was lucky that things didn't get worse. After a year or so she was released and quickly returned to Nentsia. She spent some months in anonymity, but made her full comeback into Nentsian public life as she was suddenly appointed as a member of the Senate in 1580. Apparently unhappy about the lack of power with a job in such a meaningless rubber stamp institution, she was suddenly appointed as the new Director of the Office of the Prime Minister, serving directly under the prime minister and acting as his spokeswoman. She continued to hold her seat in the Senate by the way - in Nentsia these things are possible.

If many people (especially older generations) wished Vynnychuk back in 1577 because he stood for economic stability, economic decline in recent years did definately undermine his popularity in combination with his demolition of what had remained of the constitutional order. Rampant corruption, for which many people seldomly blamed Vynnychuk personally, was now increasingly attributed to the President. More and more Nentsians were opening their eyes. They were waking up. For decades everyone resented this vague public enemy: ''Korruptsiya''. People were now finally willing to admit that it was Vynnychuk himself who was the root of the problem. But it was especially the young people who were opening their eyes, like Ihar and his friends. As the chanting grew louder, Ihar looked around to see why some sections of the demonstration were getting so loud. Then he saw it. Armoured police trucks were arriving. And not just a few. It seemed the entire Mstsislavsk police division had been mobilized. But Ihar understood that it was part of the game. The authorities liked to test the waters with some intimidation and show of force. The situation required only one small spark to turn this square into a bloody battlefield.

[Nentsia]

1581

The atmosphere near the university quickly grew tense as the riot troops, the black hordes of the System of Corruption over which President Vynnychuk presided, encircled the demonstrators. Their very presence was a provocation in the eyes of the students. Ihar Litvinchuk and his friends knew this was going to get rough.

Tough guys in plainclothes emerged among the crowd, taking down protest signs and trying to isolate the ring-leaders of the protest. Other protestors tried to protect their buddies and a fist-fight erupted amidst the crowd. Before they knew it, everyone was seemingly fighting with everyone, as plainclothes agents from the police and security ministries had infiltrated the demonstration in large numbers. A police commander shouted. ''The situation has escalated. The Mstsislavsk Police orders you to disperse!''

Ihar protected Yanya from a big guy who almost fell on top of her as he was pushed off a nearby stage by other guys. But Ihar and his friends quickly lost each other in the crowd as the water canons dazzled everyone. Ihar felt the ice-cold water beam pushing his body to the other end of the street, along with several other demonstrators. Police troops slashed their way through the crowd with their police clubs. People were lying on the ground, with blood-covered faces. Others were carried by four or five big men in civilian dress to anonymous minivans that quickly drove away. Ihar got back up on his feet to look for Yanya. ''Yanya?!'' he yelled. But Yanya was nowhere to be seen. When he turned around he saw her being dragged over the street by a policeman. He dragged her by her hair and continuously beat her with his stick. Ihar looked around him for an improvised weapon. What he found were fellow protestors, who, disgusted at the sight how a woman was being treated, jointly stormed at the policeman and Yanya. Ihar and perhaps seven or eight random figures charged at the policeman, who quickly took a run for it and joined his police comrades again. Yanya was freed.

The intensity of the police violence quickly dispersed the crowd, and many demonstrators fled the scene. They were not giving up yet however. The plan was to disperse, regroup, and respawn a new demonstration elsewhere in the city. Ihar and Yanya too fled the scene, without the rest of their group, to their planned meeting spot. But as they ran criss-cross through the alleys and streets, avoiding the open squares and major boulevards, they noticed that there were police checkpoints everywhere. When they approached the meeting place, they saw from a distance that Oleg and Artyom were already there. And there were police officers with them... checking their identity papers. Ihar and Yanya kept their distance and observed the situation. After a while, Oleg and Artyom were guided into a police car, and taken away. ''Shit!'' exclaimed Yanya. Ihar and Yanya turned around, and walked away. They walked away from the city centre, into the residential areas, pretending to be a couple taking a walk.

Yanya and Ihar walked like that for almost an hour, until they arrived at Ihar's parents' house. It was in an ordinary flat apartment building - one of those concrete units of which they had thousands in this city alone. The mixture of mud and melting snow that served as walking-paths in this neighbourhood would make it seem like a very impoverished area, but inside the buildings things were actually quite nice. The residents in this area were doing quite okay. Ihar noticed however that a black minivan was standing in the street, with black windows. He recognized it as a similar one he had seen at the demonstration. ''Move around. We're going to your grandmother. The secret police is here.''

Ihar and Yanya stayed there safely for almost a month, until one day, when Ihar was going to the shop, noticed that a black minivan pulled up next to him. Four guys in civilian dress dragged him off the street, threw him in the van, closed the door, and drove away. Ihar got a bag pulled over his head, his hands were cuffed, and he was beaten. He ended up somewhere in a prison cell where he was kept for several hours. Probably somewhere in the night or early morning, he was taken to another cell for interrogation by agents from the UGB - the Directorate of State Security. Well... interrogation... they read out the accusations against Ihar and asked him if he wanted to confess his crimes. Ihar refused, after which an interrogation followed of maybe 12 hours in which the agents constantly repeated the same questions and the same accusations. Several weeks later, without almost any sleep and with constant intimidations and bullying, Ihar had to appear before a court. He was assigned a lawyer by the state - who didn't even know Ihar's name. The court convicted Ihar to 6 weeks jail and an enormous fine. During his time in prison, Ihar heard that Yanya had received a similar treatment shortly after him.

The media remained silent about these events in Nentsia. The majority was controlled by the government, either directly, or indirectly through cronies of the president. The few remaining independent media in the country had been so systematically undermined and sabotaged in all possible ways that their reach was marginal nowadays, and the few journalists that dared to work there were constantly being harassed and intimidated from all sides. Since the suspicious deaths, ''suicides'', of several major critical journalists in Nentsia in the late 1570's, most of the well-known opposition journalists had fled into exile and operated from other countries. But Vynnychuk's agents haunted them even there. The judiciary, which still might have protected some of the rights of the demonstrators, was in no position to do anything since the pro-Vynnychuk parliament had adopted a series of laws that were so broadly defined that virtually any form of dissent could be seen as an act of ''extremism'' and a violation of the law. Nentsia was a dictatorship of laws. Towards the elections of 1582, president Vynnychuk had usurped more power than ever before. But the more dictatorial powers he accumulated, the more freedom his henchmen experienced in doing as they pleased - for all resistance to them would readily be crushed by their overlord the president. Corruption, self-enrichment, and abuse of power by the police, the bureaucracy, government officials, politicians, befriended businessmen, diplomats and so on took absurd forms. The injustice of such a system fuelled the anger and resentment in society, and the stage was being set for harsh confrontations between the People and the State.