Hulstria and Gao-Soto

[Martinulus]

March 5740

HDV in trouble: Goddestreu's Family Stratagem too Clever by Half?


Comedian and HDV leader Valentin Goddestreu tries his hardest to keep smiling as his party is forced to balance important parts of its base

When the HDV was reformed a few years ago, many expected the Hosian Democrats to quickly reforge their old coalition of moderate city-dwellers and conservative rural voters - but today, HDV Leader Valentin Goddestreu denied that his party was sitting on the fence over the Family Restoration Movement controversy sweeping Hulstria and Gao-Soto amidst continued dire polling for the nation's recently-reconstituted oldest extant party. The former host of popular late-night comedy TValentin on the national broadcaster was pursued by reporters at his house today, all asking for comment on one thing: has the HDV lost the plot on family values, always a central issue for the party? Herr Goddestreu, looking decidedly and uncharacteristically un-smiley in response to the Chronicle asking whether there was trouble for the family, repeated three times that "the HDV is still a happy family and we'd like to extend that happiness to all families in the nation. That's what our successful child benefiit inittiative was all about."


Regina Kleinemann-Gubler, the HDV's new family spokeswoman and architect of the Citizen's Initiative for Universal Child Benefit

Indeed, he might have a point there: the HDV won a major victory with the child benefit initiative, which passed the Bundesversammlung by a clear majority last year, amidst continued controversy over family values. One might wonder why voters aren't flocking to collect their orange rosettes ahead of this year's federal elections. With the HDV continuously reaffirming its support for the constitutional protection of equal working rights for women, while pursuing measures that should appeal to broad popular support, why is the Hosian Democratic electoral coalition still not materialising?

Faced with this tricky question, sources on the more progressive wing of the HDV are quick to point the finger in one very particular direction: at Regina Kleinemann-Gubler, scion of the notoriously conservative Gubler family, who was appointed families spokeswoman for the HDV and shepherded the initiative through the Bundesversammlung by means of a very outspoken media campaign. "Valentin seems to think he's too clever by half," said one source connected to the Bündnis Neu-HDV. "A Gubler as families spokesperson while women in this country are up in arms to protect their rights?" Others, in a dryly comic way perhaps more associated with the leader himself, remarked that "Valentin thought he could make hay with a Mitranian hayseed, which is surely not unreasonable."

Meanwhile, Frau Kleinemann-Gubler is quick to deny at every microphone shoved under her face that she in any way supports the Family Restoration Movement: "As a working woman, I reaffirm those rights just as much as I reaffirm the right to family. This should not be controversial." But critics point out that her rhetoric about supporting single-earner families and "the right to choose to have a family" might be suspect, especially because publications by the Gubler-Kleinemann Memorialinstitut, ever an archconservative thorn in the side of the HDV's moderate persuasion and image, have contained particularly aggressive tax breaks which critics in more metropolitan cities like Phönix say skew the playing field decidedly towards single-earner families in what they allege is a ploy to get more women to choose the family. 

While the HDV has indeed championed limited versions of such tax breaks, Goddestreu and his secondant, the Schallist Education Spokeswoman Osyanu Arinaga, have been quick to point out that they would apply just as much if the father stayed home and that a policy paper on equal parental leave was in the works. Meanwhile, Gublerians add to the quiet civil war by whispering that Goddestreu and Frau Arinaga (nominally Kleinemann-Gubler's boss) "just don't have the stomach to reaffirm the party's historic commitment to families".

With elections around the corner, it seems clear that the HDV has made a risky gambit banking on appealing to both sides of the family restoration controversy. Pushing family values by other means, academics point out, seems a classic HDV way forward out of a heated principled debate that very clearly threatens to split its electoral coalition straight down Mitrania's Kogoyama tunnel, so to speak: an urban place like Syakusen-Graaffsberg might fall one way while rural communities in the Oberflachland and more provincial cities like Hennersdam-Numamura on the other side of the looming peak might actually appreciate a tough line. With polarisation over the families issue still on the rise, the HDV seems to have a problem on its hands and its solution is still not bearing fruit. They will be hoping for that to change before election day, or Herr Goddestreu and his party might be in trouble.

He'll just have to keep smiling.