Kazan City politics

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following blog post was discovered by Randy R. Georges during his investigation of the local media)

So how’s this for a thankless job? Be the governor of a region that’s both economically depressed and the hotbed for a terrorist/revolutionary/whatever movement? And on top of that, have somebody further up the food chain bring in outside contractors as a way of telling people that hey, you can’t do your job so we’ve hired someone to fix your mess for you.

Want that job? Because I’m beginning to think that Rashid Zaydid, the governor of the Kazan district, certainly doesn’t.

Let’s take a quick look at the background, shall we? The last two men in his job didn’t fare that well either. First Sukhrab Kentau is impeached (and imprisoned) over that whole fiasco with the Convention Centre (leaving a budgetary hole that they’re still trying to fill and a dud building they’re still paying off) and then Nurassyl Smythe is assassinated by the QLF. You get the impression that Rashid didn’t so much apply for the job that he was the only person who they could talk into taking it.

Either way, Rashid winds up in the big chair and inherits a whole mess of ongoing problems (Uprising, economic depression, crime and so on) as well as then having to go through the ‘reorganisation’ of the planetary government when it joined the Free Worlds League. All in the meantime he’s failing to make any headway into any of the region’s problems while inheriting an extra layer of bureaucracy from the League. (Remember when the Senate Alliance broke away from the Republic over this sort of thing? That worked out well, didn’t it)

So what’s he to do? He appeals to the Planetary Guard for support in putting down the insurrection/rebellion/uprising/bunch of guys who have a hard-on for a millennium-dead government that nobody liked anyway/whatever it is, and gets a passable result. They reinforce the local guard with more tanks, VTOLs and men and do a neat job of spiffing up the local garrison, but all that does is give the QLF more targets to shoot.

That in turn sees the PG’s ‘trouble-shooter’, Roxana Zaryos, have to step up her own activities while undercutting his authority. She gets to go over his head, citing the ‘emergency situation’ and such (Resolution 288 anyone?) and call the shots, so all he can do is sigh and fill in the paperwork for her. She requests help from the FWLM, but they’re too busy being ravaged by the Wolves to fight a grubby little local uprising. So there goes that idea.

Meanwhile, here in Kazan city, things are going just peachy. The local economy remains in the hole, unemployment is funnelling disaffected youth straight into the QLF’s recruitment centres (or tents, or caves or whatever), a new designer drug is sweeping the streets and the rebels seem to be getting even more bold. Rashid Zaydid, the man who’s supposed to be in charge of the situation is more drowning under a wave of crises as things are going from bad to worse. And in all this, Roxana’s busy suborning local law enforcement into terrorist-hunting with little results, but he’s the public face of all that’s going wrong.

But our PG commander still doesn’t have a solution for the mess. Out of options, she takes the only logical step; she goes over his head and straight to the planetary government to hire a Mercenary unit to fight their fires for them. His part in all this? Sign the paperwork that puts our Tax Eagles into the pockets of those money-soldiers. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for ending this mess once and for all, but the question remains, is this really the best way to do it? Will this actually work or will the presence of BattleMechs only escalate things further?

I’ll say one thing though. Whatever happens, I’m willing to wager that Zaydid cops the blame for it.

- Post by user uzetank on the Kazan City Politics Watch blog, Hamilton Interweb