Kalistani Major History

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The People's Press
Elections Held For National Executive Committee
Florence Orlando is nominated for President and Curti wins his vote by huge majority though some key allies are defeated
Kaliburg, Ananto
January 14th, 4076


Florence Orlando has been selected as the Labour Party's Presidential nominee

Last week the Labour Party held elections for the National Executive Committee for the first time in its history. Previously, the NEC-  which functions as the LP's cabinet and determines its nominations to the national cabinet- had been exclusively appointed by the party leader. Current Labour leader Luca Curti proposed a change to the rules, though, which was subsequently approved by party members, so now all members of the NEC must be voted to their positions democratically. The decision was seen by many as Curti giving in to pressure from challengers to his leadership from the party's more 'moderate' wing, headed by Marianna Simonides.

The format for the elections was somewhat improvised, given that they had never happened before, so it is sure to develop in future. This time round, though, the elections were held twelve months before national elections, candidates required the nomination of 1,000 party members to get on the ballot paper and they tended to run in co-operation with each other. This resulted in the development of several competing groups of candidates. The first, consisting almost entirely of the incumbent NEC, aligned themselves to Luca Curti; the second was made up of Simonides and her close supporters; the third comprised failed Presidential nominee Jayanta Singh and his allies whilst the fourth was composed of extreme, hard-left members of the Şorewa group. Additionally, there were several candidates running independently.

One such independent was Florence Orlando, who was standing for the Deputy Leadership and Presidential nomination. She was up against Singh and Simonides in what was predicted to be the most significant vote of them all. Orlando was victorious by a sizeable margin, beating Simonides by 39 percentage points and Singh by 52. Curti himself received nearly 90% of the votes for the Internal Affairs position, which he currently holds in the national cabinet although the other Labour member of the government, Serhat Aslan, did not contest his current role. Instead, he won the four-candidate race to replace Regina Vestri (who has stepped into a different role as President of Terra Union) as Head of Foreign Affairs. Ahmad Ali replaced him as Head of Environment and Tourism.

There were some victories for Curti's detractors, though. Simonides-supported Guðrun Jonsdottir defeated Wenonah Accosi to take her place as the Infrastructure and Transport spokesperson, while Jim O'Connell edged Lorenzo Ambrose by the narrowest of margins to become Head of Trade and Industry. Ivan Moric, who ran alongside Jayanta Singh, recorded a decisive victory in Food and Agriculture. The results of all the votes can be found here: http://bit.ly/2b1PulZ

We contacted Florence Orlando for a comment but she declined, informing us she would be outlining her entire Presidency plans soon.