Cardassian Union
From TFC Galactopedia
The Cardassian Union (sometimes also referred to as the Cardassian Empire) is the official governing body of the Cardassian people and Cardassian space, a region which occupies the near-reaches of the Alpha Quadrant, directly adjacent to Federation territory. It is a democratic union in name only, it's ruling civillian "Detapa Council" merely a front to lend legitimacy to the fascist stratocracy of the Central Command.
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Governtment and Politics
Government
The Cardassian Unions governmental structure is based on several governmental instances such the civilian Detapa council and the Union Supreme Tribunal, Cardassian Central Command and the Obsidian order.
Detapa Council
The first organisation is the Detapa council, which is an executive and legislative body consisting of elected representatives from the various entities which makes up the Union. The council currently consists of 2037 members presided over by a jointly chosen Chairman. The council is further divided into smaller department and agencies charged with running the everyday business of the Union. The Council is responsible for the economy and legal code, and is the only body with the authority to declare or end wars, set treaties with other star faring powers and accept ambassadors.
The Chairman is elected for one year terms, with an unlimited set of re-elections. It is his duty to lead the council in session, set up the daily schedule and propose new laws and amendments to the Union Constitution. One fifth of the council is elected every year, meaning that a representative sits for five years before having to run for office a new.
While theoretically the governing body of the Union Central Command and the Obsidian order, the council is in practice little more than a puppet for the military junta, which sets the terms and has the council ratify them to get the appearance of a constitutional procedure. Actually based on pure percentage of entitled voters the Union is one of the most democratic powers in the alpha quadrant.
Union Supreme Tribunal
The Supreme Tribunal is the judicial body of the Union, with the responsibility to asses the Detapa Council and make sure its members follow the set constitution. It consists of twenty Archons of which one is quarterly rotated to the position of High Archon which leads the council and acts as high judge. While technically not under the supervision of either the Detapa Council or Central Command, the Supreme Tribunal is run very much like the Council by the military and obsidian order.
Cardassian jurisprudence, while elaborate and sometimes arcane, ultimately holds one goal in mind : establish beyond all doubt that the State has been wronged and that the accused is guilty. The accused are always presumed guilty, and their conviction and sentencing decided beforehand. The trial process exists primarily so that the accused has an opportunity to publically confess his crime and serve as propaganda material, although the opportunity for the accused to implicate others in a futile attempt to defend himself or bargain for clemency is seen as an added benefit.
Central Command
The true political authority of the Cardassian Union, Central Command is controlled by a triumvirate of high status Legates. These three officers are considered equal according to military provisions and acts as checks for each other to make it impossible for one man to attain singular power. A member of this instance sits for life or until withdrawing either from old age or political reasons. When one seat becomes vacant the two remaining members choose the third, with deadlocks being decided by majority vote in the lower council.
The triumvirate is aided by a council of Guls and Legates representing the various Orders, Sections and Departments of the Guard as a whole. This council is not a decision making body and is meant to advice the highest officers. They can however oust members of the Triumvirate upon a ninety percent majority vote.
Central command is the main political force of the Cardassian Union, maintaining control over its armed forces and from there the civilian government. The Detapa council is merely a figurehead for the military junta.
The Obsidian Order
The fourth and most shadowy organisation which makes up the governmental structure of the Cardassian Union is the Obsidian Order. One the most efficient intelligence organisations in the galaxy, the order acts as the secret police of the union and can effectively make dissidents and protesters disappear. While its only restriction is that it is forbidden to posses military equipment, the Order and the military exists under a shaky status quo which keeps those under the watch of Central Command relatively immune to inquires. Many in the military feel that it would be best to eliminate the order and replace it with a more controllable agency, but due to the orders nature this is not so simple as it sounds.
Politics in the Union
While a military dictatorship, the Cardassian Union still retains the semblances of a democratic power and limited self-expression is still an undeniable part of the Constitution. While there are limits to this, this leads to the existence of both political parties and organisations capable of carrying at least some of the concerns of the people to the ears of the Central Command.
This of course doesn’t mean that the state tolerates too much outspokenness, and the most liberal parties are best described as right-leaning moderates on the political scale. The more radical political activists are typically either forced underground or fall into the hands of the Obsidian Order, ending up in Gulags or simply disappearing. Members of the military are also often part of the political process, and often represents there own parties in the military assembly.
The most established parties are the Trugasha Coalition, Cardassia Rights Front, Union National Party and the Peoples will Party which all has seats in the Detapa Council. A smattering of smaller independent parties and offshoots of the larger one exists, but these rarely have more than a few seats or none at all.
- General Electorate Percentages 2369
- Trugasha Coalition: 43%
- Cardassia Rights Front: 27%
- Union National Party: 15%
- Peoples Will Party: 9%
- Miscellaneous: 6%
Trugasha Coalition
The Trugasha Coalition is a political alliance of several moderate parties aiming for a less aggressive stance in foreign affairs, more social benefits for the general populace and better education. The coalition currently carries forty-three percents of the general votes, thereby having a majority in the Detapa Council as well being the general political voice of the military. Party chairman is Rogek Marta, who also is the chairman of the council.
Cardassia Rights Front
The CRF is an ultra-nationalistic party whose goal is to extend the Unions borders and influence at any cost. Economic and social progress are secondary to the greater cause, and many if not most members adheres to the belief of a manifest destiny for the Cardassian people. It is well-known for its massive gatherings and events, often filled with lengthy oratories mixed with spectacular displays of Cardassian prowess and bravado. It maintained a steady twenty-seven percents of the voters, and is steadily rising in prominence as the difficulties in the Demilitarized Zone continue to rise.
Union National Party
The National Party takes a sort of middle ground between the Coalition and the CRF, maintaining the need for economic progress trough a slow expansion. It is against adventurism in foreign affairs, rather advocating a middle path akin to the idea that it is easier to trade with people than forcefully taking the resources. It maintains nine percents of the general votes, but is slowly loosing favour both in the populace and among the military.
Peoples Will Party
The PLP is the party most likely to be called a radical party in Cardassian politics. It has a slightly blurry party manifest, and consists of several leanings joined together in a Cardassian facsimile of communism. They would like to replace the current free market system with a state controlled mass-market as well as perform changes to the educational and social benefits system to achieve a better people. How this is to be accomplished is not yet fully understood, but the party still attracts some six percents of the voters.
History
The Cardassian Union was founded approximately 500 years before the opening of The Great Rift. Though a largely agricultural world at the time, Cardassia was host to several bustling urban centers, most of them loosely affiliated by a representative senate known as the Detapa Council for the purposes of regulating trade and promoting peace among the city-states.
A few decades before the Cardassian Union came into being, a great plague swept over the largest continent's food supplies, causing a massive famine that threatened to wipe out most of the Cardassian race. The Detapa Council, lacking the resources to quarentine the infected foodstocks or the manpower to manage what quickly was becoming mass hysteria, turned to a commercial security corporation called the Obsidian Guard to bring order to the situation.
The Obsidian Guard was one of the few pieces of industry to survive the Global Cardassian Wars of the previous century, a bloody set of campaigns between warring nations that had reduced most of the planet to a smattering of farmers and traders. They agreed to assist the council in the crisis, but for a price: the city-states had to forefeit half of the seats on the Detapa Countil to members of the Guard.
The Council refused and for a decade more, Cardassians began to die by the thousands. The Detapa confederation nearly crumbled as fear and famine swept the continent, until they finally agreed to the Guard's demands. By now, however, the Obsidian Guard was in a much better position to negotiate, and instead of accepting placement in the council, they allied themselves with the a rival nation on the southern continent and launched an invasion.
The famine-ravished city-states quickly fell without a major battle, many people welcoming the invaders as liberators or saviors. The Detapa Council was seized and the enemy nation declared itself the Cardassian Central Command and the Obsidian Guard it's military intelligence agency, today known as the Obsidian Order. Together, the groups used force of numbers and an extermination campaign to wipe out any crops or foodstuffs infected with the disease--or so was thought.
In reality, small quantities of infected crops were kept and secretly delivered to the disparate groups of Cardassians all accross the planet, spreading the famine worldwide. As they did before, the Obsidian Order and the Central Command presented themselves as saviors to the disorganized and starving civillians, stamping out the very crop disease they had helped to spread.
By the end of the campaigns, the Cardassian Union was formed, uniting the entire world under the flag of the Central Command; to avoid appearing too much like the domineering power-hungry states of the last century, the Detapa Council was spared death and propped up for the benefit of the people, lending a kind of democratic legitimacy to the authoritarian government.
The designs of the Central Command and the Obsidian Order had one nearly fatal drawback, however: by spreading the famine so wide and destroying so much of the world's natural food supplies, the biosphere was irreprably damaged, making it impossible to grow enough crops to feed the population through the next three centuries.
Predicting this, the Central Command poured it's efforts and resources into developing spacefaring technology, believing that travelling to and conquoring other planets would be the only way they could establish "breathing room" for the continued growth and prosperity of their people. These efforts were banking on historical accounts of a brief contact with an alien species nearly 200 years prior, who called themselves the Ferengi.
Expansion
The Union began expanding in the mid-24th century, as its homeworld was impoverished and decaying. They first took many of the neighboring star systems in their home sector, most of them occupied by non-spacefaring races or lacking in intelligent life. Soon, the Cardassians were no longer resource strapped or straining the ability of their home planet to feed themselves; their ever-growing population was now served by entire worlds of agriculture, and their reformed industry fed by strip-mining nearby planets.
But the expansion did not stop at this point, on the contrary it pushed forward with ever more verocity; the now proud Cardassian forces thinking that space was ripe for their taking. During this period, they made first-contact with the Bajoran people, but as their military efforts were largely tasked with putting other nearby minor powers to heel, Bajor was at first spared an outright invasion. Believing the Cardassians to be merely visitors during this perior, the Bajorans were lulled into a false sense of security. Eventually, Cardassia anexed the world, but only as a "protectorate" of the Cardassian Union. However, a sudden outbreak of war with the Talarian Republic put a strain on Cardassian resources and the Central Command ordered that Bajor be converted into a strip-mining operation, at which time major resistance to what was now called "The Occupation" began.
TFC Expanded Universe
Source Note
- The original version of this article comes from Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference (http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/index.php/Main_Page).
- The article itself is here (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Cardassian_Union).
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