Interview with Prime Minister Truman
Thank you everyone coming to the
Porcupine. I'm truly honored to be hired by Jbrase becoming the first Reporter of Regional Affairs and Elections since the reporting company has resurrected. This is my first contribution to the
Porcupine.
*Interview was held on February 25, 2017
Q1: What is it like becoming the first Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Fremont?
Truman: I am legitimately excited by this new Constitution of ours, and I hope the enthusiasm proves contagious. We're making history here: never before in thirteen years has any region attempted to do what we're doing now in this experiment with parliamentary democracy. For a regionalist, this is a shining example of how local and regional governments act as the laboratories of our republic. I'll be honest: it is going to take a lot of sweat and good, old-fashioned leadership to pull this off, but I'm looking forward to the challenge and thankful to have a extraordinary group of Atlasians in the House of Commons to work with.
Q2: What are the successes during your tenure in Fremont?
Truman: It's really astounding to see how much we have accomplished in the last six weeks when you consider where we were at the time of my election. Back, I said that there were two main things we needed to accomplish before the end of my first term: we needed overhaul the regional government from the bottom up and replace that horrifying First Constitution, and we needed to restore activity to the legislature. We have now done both of those things. The Second Constitution was easily ratified with multi-partisan support; of course, I've touched on the significance of that victory already. What I'm really proud of is the extent to which our regional legislators have risen to the occasion. The last session of the Assembly passed more bills than all previous sessions combined; those bills were introduced not just by myself, but also by Speaker 1184AZ and Legislator Simossad, both of whom will be joining the House of Representatives next week. It's been really inspiring to work with them, and with Legislator RFayette, and I'm hopeful the new Commons can build on their good work.
Q3: What are the challenges during your tenure in Fremont?
Truman: Strange as it sounds, we've got to get the Commons arguing again. In the last session, three fourths of regional offices were held by Laborites, and so you saw a lot of bills passing the Assembly with hardly any debate. That's not the worst problem to have from my perspective, as it made it easy to tackle important issues like constitutional reform, but too much unanimity can lead to stagnation and unrepresentative government. I personally recruited conservatives to run in the last election for this very reason: a sustainable democracy requires a vigorous contest of ideas, and that's something I intend to focus on for the next four months. The new parliament is split 3-2 between liberals and conservatives, so hopefully there will be enough discord to make things interesting without bringing progress to a grinding halt.
Q4: What improvements do you want to see in Atlasia as a whole?
Q5: What are your thoughts on Atlasia having a different structure (Parliamentary, unicameral, etc.)?
*
Truman: Speaking as the father of Fremontian parliamentarianism, I absolutely think we can learn from parliamentary democracies around the world, and I hope Fremont will prove a positive example of that fact. On the other hand, a major overhaul of our national government is not something to be entered into lightly. It took our republic's brightest minds almost a year to write and ratify the Fourth Constitution, and this was at a time when the public was largely in agreement about the changes needing to be made. I'm always open to new ideas, and I've been intrigued by some of the proposals put forward by Lumine and others; but reform only matters if we play the game we create, and so my priority in the coming months will be to revive the contest of ideas that, frankly, has fallen dormant of late.
*Here, Truman pretty much combined Q4 and Q5.
