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Op-Ed
Managing Editor
In late April, Sopo announced his intentions on EBC Radio to run for Chief of State. The remainder of the show, originally billed as speculation, quickly transitioned into Calvin and myself speculating not only whether someone would choose to run against Sopo, but whether anybody even could.
Sopo's electoral fortunes had been riding high. He recently won a Senate seat in a Senate term that seemed destined to trumpet reform. He had gotten approval to assemble a research committee to survey popular opinions on various reforms. He had cruised to victory as a part of the First Minister ticket with Maowi. Generally speaking, Sopo had found the Europeian sweet spot where he was social enough to have good relationships with nearly all the members, but politically-minded enough to keep his focus on governmental work and achievement.
But there had been some stumbling blocks. Sopo was generally seen as doing a middling job when he inherited the First Minister role after Maowi's sudden resignation. He later resigned from that role, making way for a fresh perspective from DAX who was widely seen as successfully rallying the back half of the term, and while announcing his Chief of State run he declared he was resigning from the Senate to focus on the campaign. This gave his detractors some valid points of criticism, which then-Senator Olde Delaware began pursuing as the radio show kept rolling:
"Sopo running for something and intending on resigning just stops someone new from running because who is going to stand up against Sopo [...] There's honestly nothing funny about running for an office with the intention to resign."
It was a line of attack that seemed to dog Sopo through the campaign, despite few direct questions being asked about it. While it's tough to determine in politics where a valid concern ends and a political attack begins, Sopo found himself pushing back against false statements that claimed he always "resigned due to RL then ran for office again," or tried to assign motive like "running for office while intending to resign." Despite closing the final days of the campaign with broad popular support, Sopo lost the Senate vote -- notably including the votes of two Senators who later resigned themselves.
But, like many tropes in Europeian politics, this line of attack has seemingly been immortalized in a culture of inside jokes, memes, and tongue-in-cheek references. While I've been at the butt of many of these jokes myself (yes, half a decade later I'm still deleting the EBC), this one is far more politically salient, and with multiple references to it in EuroChat in the past week alone, I think it's a record worth correcting.
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Sopo has served as President on four separate occasions and never resigned once -- though in his first term the atmosphere of the region was so toxic hardly anyone could've blamed him for doing so. His next two terms were aggressively middling, though in both instances he was responsible for elevating Vice Presidents who then became influential Presidents in their own right. In 2013 it was Vinage, and in 2015 it was the later icon, Writinglegend.
When Sopo rose to power for his fourth term in 2018, it was, ironically, due to a series of resignations.
A foreign affairs crisis had been brewing between Europeia and our erstwhile ally Osiris. A dispute over a joint operation between Osiris and Europeia's inter-regional military alliance (the "IJCC" which included Europeia, Balder, and The Land of Kings and Emperors) had exploded into allegations of lying and deception. As the matter gained tension and steam, President Ervald resigned from office citing pressure from the work and having to "deal with issues before they spin out of control."
And this issue was very much spinning out of control.
His Vice President, Drexlore, then took office and established communication with Osiris over the dispute. However, unknown to the rest of the Europeian foreign affairs apparatus in the region, Drexlore began ignoring repeated entreaties from the Pharaoh of Osiris until days quickly became multiple weeks of silence.
When Osiris decided to publicly end the alliance with Europeia, it was opportunistic to be sure. To focus on the silence of Europeia's President when other officials were trying to manage the crisis presented an incomplete picture, but it was nevertheless a damning one. Under pressure for domestic inactivity, real life stressors, and this new foreign affairs crisis, President Drexlore followed his predecessor in resigning, leaving his newly-confirmed Vice President, Sopo, at the helm.
There were a fair number of questions about whether the region would survive. The executive government had been paralyzed in place for nearly a month. Osiris ditched their alliance with Europeia, would others follow? Would there even be enough domestic activity to slog on?
Sopo was the stopgap for all those fears. Only months later, Europeia would be leading the world in a war against The New Pacific Order and domestic activity would grow with vigorous discussions on reforms like the eventual executive split. He certainly didn't turn water into wine, but his two terms at the helm served a firewall against the chaos and apathy that threatened to consume Europeia. It was hard work, and it was good work.
Partially through Kuramia’s term as Europeia’s final President (until later this month…) Sopo stepped down as Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the war with The New Pacific had been brought to a successful close.
After a brief break he returned to public life, serving the region as Second Minister and Councilor of External Engagement. And he didn't resign again until that fateful day when he announced he was stepping down as First Minister in favor of his deputy, DAX.
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“When I took office as first minister three weeks ago, I felt bound by duty to take up the mantle of leadership again for the good of our republic. Nonetheless, I don’t think I’m the man for the moment. The reason Maowi and I originally flipped our ticket was to bring a new generation of leadership to the fore. After considering the challenges that lie ahead, my own motivations, and what I think is a genuine yearning in the region for the next generation to step up, I have decided to resign.
I fully believe that Dax is prepared to serve as first minister, bringing a level of enthusiasm to the office that I cannot.” -- Sopo, on resigning as First Minister
Maowi's resignation has seemingly come out of nowhere, and a term that was meant to symbolize a new generation taking the mantle was once more in the hands of a steely veteran.
While the merits of Sopo’s resignation are fully up for debate, what isn’t up for debate was the ultimate outcome. DAX left office with critical acclaim from the region, setting the stage of the long-term boom the region is still experiencing up to this day.
Sopo didn’t recklessly leave office just for the lulz, and he didn’t poorly misjudge his RL time constraints -- though that would be reasonable given his abrupt elevation. He assessed the regional situation and made the best decision he could with the information he had.
**
I said it in the first few hundred words of this piece, but it bears repeating: resignations are worth scrutiny and criticism.
Resigning from two offices in succession isn’t a good look, and the logic behind Sopo’s Senate resignation immediately prior to running for higher office did come off as bewildering and flimsy. But the long term cultural impact of the criticism Sopo received during one campaign for one office doesn’t, in my mind, rise up to the historical record.
Far be it from me to be the arbiter of what jokes, memes and humor are allowed to persist in Europeia. If I had it my way, we’d just all be repeating funny lines from The West Wing. But the relationship between comedy and political outcomes can be a intertwined one, which is why I felt it was important to give a little more context to this particular joke. What you do with it, is totally up to you.
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