Plenty Party

The Plenty Party, often also referred to as the Prosperity Party, is a center to center-right political party in Adwa. It was founded in a schism with the Republican Party in the 1550s during Adwa in its post-Civil War period. It changed to its current name from the Republican Plenty Party in 1571. Its original name reflected the party’s roots as part of the former Republican movement. For much of its history, the Plenty Party has served as Adwa’s second-largest political party, although it achieved its first coalition majority in the Imperial Parliament in the 1570s. Today, it is one of the country’s two major policies parties, along with its rival, the Adwan National Party.

Schism with the Republicans
After the end of the Adwan Civil War, newly-crowned Emperor Zara followed through on his promise of holding free elections throughout the country. While the Adwan National Party was the big winner of these early elections, elements of the former Republican faction were able to mobilize politically and form the Republican Party. The Republican Party, despite its name, did not immediately tout abolishment of the monarchy as the center of its platform, but rather focused on lowering economic barriers and other, more moderate policies. The early Republican Party was generally only able to gain large numbers of seats in the southeast, where their seat of power had been during the war. However, by the late 1550s, factions had formed within the party.

Radical anti-monarchists who wished to push for further limiting the monarch’s power had gained control of the party, and threatened to reverse what few gains the party had made. In 1557, a large portion of the party’s leadership departed, led by Plenty Party founder Tariku Gambal, and announced the formation of the rival Republican Plenty Party, its name emphasizing their desire for economic reform over political ones. Although this schism hurt both parties in the short term, as Adwa continues to liberalize politically, the radical positions of the Republicans became less and less attractive, until the party ultimately disbanded in the late 1560s.

Plenty party
After the dissolution of the Republican Party in 1568, the Republican Plenty Party set about reforming its image to Adwa’s electorate. Thus far, politics had been dominated by the Adwan National Party, with coalitions only being formed with various local parties that made and continue to make up a large portion of the Imperial Parliament’s Popular Chamber. In 1571, it renamed itself to simply the Plenty Party, also marketing itself as the Prosperity Party, depending on the linguistic/cultural group in question. It reemphasized its primary focuses of economic and trade reform, as well as wishing to lessen state intervention in the economy in order to promote market-guided growth within the nation. Due to the increasing unpopularity of some of the policies touted by the Adwan National Party and Emperor Merhanu Zara, the Plenty party was able to sweep several areas that had been highly contested in previous elections, even making slight inroads into select regions of the northeast, normally an ANP stronghold.

In Adwa’s 1573 National Elections, the Plenty party was able to obtain a narrow but absolute majority of the Popular Chamber, for the first time in Adwa’s history. In defiance of this new majority, Emperor Merhanu Zara elected to pick ANP leader Kidane Alemayehu to serve as his Popular Tribune, creating a deadlocked government from the start. This only furthered the resolve of Plenty Party members, and when snap elections were called the next year, their majority grew. By this point, Emperor Merhanu Zara conceded his mistake and selected Fisseha Trefe as the first Popular Tribune to come from the Plenty Party. Among the first acts taken after was a joint effort by the Emperor and the Imperial Parliament to amend Adwa’s constitution, requiring the monarch to select their Popular Tribune from whichever party commands an outright majority or coalition majority within the Popular Chamber. The Plenty Party not only became a party of economic change, but a symbol of Adwans’ increasing political liberties.

Today
Although the Plenty Party has served as the opposition for longer than it has in power, it has enacted key reforms in its time in power and has extracted key concessions from its foes in its times out of it. Despite efforts to diversify its demographic support, the party’s base remains the descendants of creole peoples descended from Ichorian colonists in the country’s southeast. The overwhelming majority of Vayonists in Adwa are Plenty Party voters as well, and the party is the closest to an Auroran-styled party that can be found in the country. The party has found growing support in recent years with urban middle class voters of all ethnicities, as well as intellectuals and academics who espouse a more wide worldview than that traditionally held by many Adwans.

Ideology
The Plenty Party describes itself as an advocate of ethics, democracy, the exercise of human rights, the market economy, and economic liberalism. It presents itself as a centrist party with some center-right economic tendencies. It has historically also emphasized secularism over the historic interplay between faith and politics that has define Adwa for millenia, and generally supports alignment with Auroran Community member states such as Ichoria, Kathia, and Achysia. It describes itself as a socially liberal party, and believes that the state should not play a direct role in the promotion of cultural matters.

In the early 1580s, the Plenty Party-led government initiated reforms to avert an impending economic crisis caused by certain edicts undertaken by the Adwan government regarding agriculture and food security, specifically creating set prices for goods and attempting to control their distribution. The reforms progressed furthest in opening up areas of Adwa to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulation of domestic businesses, reforming the trade regime, and doing away with these hurtful restrictions on the agricultural sector. The goals of these reforms was to avoid famine, increase investment in infrastructure, reduce the fiscal deficit, and privitize large sections of the private sector, and it was successful in most of these. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open Adwa to greater foreign trade while stabilizing external loans. Tirune Endaleh, an Ichorian-educated economist and Chairman of the Imperial Reserve Bank, played a central role in implementing these reforms.

Organization and structure
The Plenty Party was structured in a hierarchical manner when it split off from the Republicans in 1557, but became more of a decentralized big tent by the time of its ascent to power in the 1573 elections. At present, the Party Leader and other high offices are elected by delegates from Adwa’s various devolutions at an annual national conference; in every devolution in Adwa, there is a Plenty/Prosperity Committee, which is responsible for directing political campaigns at local and state levels, and assisting the campaigns for parliamentary constituencies. Each PC has a working committee of 17 members, most of whom are appointed by the Party Leader onto a list and elected by local party members from said list. Those elected as members of the various devolved legislatures form the Plenty/Prosperity Legislature Parties in various assemblies. The party is also organized into various committees and sections; it publishes a daily paper, the National Herald.

The National Plenty Party Committee is composed of delegated sent from all local party committees. The delegates elect Plenty committees, including the Plenty Worker’s Committee, consisting of the party’s labor wing. The NPPC makes all important executive and political decisions for the party. Since the party schism, the Tribune of the National Committee has effectively been Party Leader, and the party’s candidate for Popular Tribune.