[ZRT CONVENTION SPEECH] On the recent election

[Óïn Ursüm]

The Chair gives the floor to Carlüs Xheraltescù. The Chair will then give the floor to the entire Convention to discuss the Election Report.

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

This speech will be given in the next couple of days, if this is acceptable to the Chair?

[Óïn Ursüm]

Yes, the floor is yours until you deliver the speech, and then I'll open it up for debate.

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convention, let me start by noting how much of an honour it is to have been invited to report on our performance in the last General Election as the serving General Secretary at the time. I've enjoyed my time as General Secretary, organising the party from behind closed doors and allowing Miestra to take as much flak from our political opponents to allow us to work predominantly without interference. I'll keep this pretty short and concise, because past strategy is rarely particularly interesting in terms of political parties - especially when most of you had first-hand experience of it.

Stating the Obvious
Our performance in the last General Election was fantastic. It was genuinely a brilliant show, and for that I must applaud everyone who was involved in securing such a degree of electoral success for us. The goal for any party, I should think, is to win as many seats as possible, and whilst we didn't achieve a majority in the Cosa (which is unsurprising), we did firmly establish ourselves as the largest, most stubborn, hard-nosed, and most opposition-y opposition party in Talossa. That's not a bad show considering we went into that election as a new party.

How Did We Do It?
We did it with style. We stormed the election with true revolutionary vigour and with an ideological zealotry unprecedented in Talossa. The most zealous of which was our then leader, Miestra Schiva. Crucial to the ZRT's strategy, Schiva was responsible for getting our voice heard - not long after reunision/returniture, few active Talossans could deny knowing who Miestra Schiva was. Though, there are some who say we suffered blows to our popularity due to the aggressive nature of her debating skills. That's entirely possible, though given that we have no results to compare the election with, it is impossible to tell. Schiva's comments did at least provide an exceptional amount of entertainment for some, in any case. We went into that election with guns figuratively blazing and I'd like to say we did everything we could.

We didn't.

We did everything our membership allowed us to at the time, but none of us had enough energy to go that extra mile, and I'll talk about the extra mile we'll need to go in the other speech I'll be making to the Convention.

At the time of the election, this party's leadership had not long recovered from providing the most steadfast and dedicated leadership of the Talossan Republic, which it had arguably seen. For too long, it was members of this party (though prior to the founding of the ZRT mark II) who had kept the Republic afloat, and so it should come as no surprise that steam was in short supply by the party's leadership.

And yet despite this, so much work was done in recruiting and preparation for the party's first ever challenge: the General Election of 2012. The internal party structure, though basic, was organised effectively - if the Convention will permit me a degree of self-congratulation, I spared no time in organising a group on Facebook to effectively communicate quickly with members of the party. We used it (and still do use it) to throw ideas around, and in a few weeks we had our very own manifesto - testament to the hard work, we ALL put in, especially our then leader.

What it proved was that there's a fire of Talossan republicanism which still burns brightly in the modern Kingdom; we have done well to feed these flames and keep them burning.

Since Then...
Since then, we've done all right for ourselves. We've proven ourselves to be legislatively competent, and the work that our members have put in through helping us draft legislation has been fantastically helpful. But like I said before, there's more that each of us can do, and I look forward to detailing my ideas in my next speech.

Thank you, Chair.

[Óïn Ursüm]

Meirci, segñhor. The Chair gives the floor to the entire Convention to discuss the Election Report.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

It will be certainly interesting to compare the results in the next election under a presumably less "all-in brawl" style of leadership. The other difference now is that non-reviênsadéirs - either those who were Kingdom citizens before Reunision, or new citizens - are coming to the fore in our party. I think we should encourage this in our leadership. Some people thought the ZRT was going to be an "ethnic party" of appeal only to Fiôvans - let's prove them wrong, and spread to every Province!

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

We seem to have a fairly broad distribution concerning our membership already - the majority of the parliamentary group of the ZRT are non-Fiôvans (not that there's anything wrong with us Fiôvans!). The Convention Chair - an Ataturkey, is, if I were a betting man, going to succeed me as General Secretary. The ZRT is already proving, and will continue to prove those people wrong.

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

The election result was better than I ever imagined it could have been. The old ZRT in the Republic was the leadership team who guided us through the long and complicated process to there being a single Talossan state once more. The ZRT of today is that grand old party's direct descendant.

We must do more to get our message out, and I pledge to do more than I did last time to help things along.