The Earth has gone through a time of massive upheaval in the previous five years under President Casey. Our first ships have gone from a dream in the minds of a few scientists to solid, space-worthy creations under his governance, and, if I may say, the help of Infrastructure. Moreover, those very ships have served to find the very first extraterrestrial Trans-Newtonian Mineral source on the moon, and they discovered what may be considered the most momentous discovery in the history of all humanity: the discovery of extraterrestrial life, or what remains of it. All of these thing were done under the auspices of our first President, Jayne Casey, and for that I respect the man greatly.
With this in mind, however, our great President's term is running out, in just under 6 months, we will be holding the second elections of a new age of mankind, and thus far, no one has even declared a candidacy, and time is running out. With no candidates we shall have no President, and there is no precedent for this in our young nation and no legislation for this eventuality. Therefore, I believe that we need at least one candidate in order to extend the life of our Federation.
I, George Payne, hereby declare that I am running for the position of President of the Terran Federation. I am, for now, the only candidate for office at this time, but do not make the assumption that I have leaped into the election just because I see a lack of candidates. I have a plan. A plan that will make Humanity ready to face any opponent that may or may not lie beyond the reaches of this Solar System.
Of course, the President does not actually do very much at the present time. President Casey, although a seminal figure in our history, did not directly give the orders to the people. The main power of a President comes in appointing the Ministers, and my Presidency will be no different, although I would like to be more hands-on in my direction of the state.
In terms of the Ministers I would appoint in the future, I do not want to tie down and guarantee any Minister a job so early in the election season, but at the current time, I see no problem with any of the current ministers, although I will need to find a replacement for me at the position of Infrastructure Minister.
The other powers of the Presidency, namely espionage and diplomacy, must be taken in a more case-by-case attitude. Applying one policy to a massive empire and the same policy to a tiny city-state would be an enormous mistake, and the same will be true in the voids of space. Therefore, I will take a pragmatic and level-headed attitude towards any alien powers we may discover.
I see a few of you dipping your head in boredom, I'm talking to you Murphy, so I will wrap it up. Humanity has gone through a lot in order to finally come to the peace of the past few years, but out in space, it is surely going to be a place with hostile aliens, which we must overcome. Even greater than the threat from aliens we must be victorious over the heinous threat of complacency. Never can we think that what we have is enough, we must strive for the stars. We must never be stagnant, we must constantly grow. Accomplishing this will be the goal of my Presidency, so as to allow Humanity to be victorious over all challenges. To make Victorious Humanity.
George Payne
Candidate for President of the Terran Federation
