2010 Libirachi Presidential Election

The **2010 Libirachi Presidential Election** was the second democratic election for the office of president of the Libirachi Empire and was held on April 16, 2010 between Jacob Zuma and Nathan Jackson and the Revolutionary Socialist and Revolutionary parties respectively, with Jackson securing 63% of the counted votes. Despite the age of the incumbent President Zuma, Jackson and his rival both held large rallies, although Jackson's relative youth allowed him to travel more frequently, reaching more disenfranchised citizens.

Following the first Libirachi presidential election in 1852, inaugural president Stanford Rightly conducted a self-coup in 1856 in order to extend his presidency by abolishing term limits and term lengths. For the next 98 years, the Imperial Republic of Libirachi became an autocratic and increasingly authoritarian dictatorship, before the formerly governing Libirachi Revolutionary Party under the interim leadership of first minister Jacob Zuma was overthrown by the Libirachi Progressive Party under Xi Kanna in 1950. After Xi's death in 1970, Zuma returned to power in a bloodless takeover at the head of a Revolutionary Socialist faction, whilst the original Revolutionary Party was largely forced out of politics. In 2008, a growing pro-democracy movement led to the Revolutionary Party electing the campaigner Nathan Jackson as its leader. In a bid to quell growing protests and uprisings against his rule, the 89 year old President Jacob Zuma made the unexpected decision in March 2010 to hold a democratic presidential election to supposedly bring out the "silent majority" he claimed to back his presidency.

With nearly 63% of Libirachi citizens voting in favour of pro-democracy leader Nathan Jackson, President Jacob Zuma refused to concede defeat in the election and was forced to leave office by the Libirachi Imperial Army, which arrested and detained the president in order to end the protests and install a new leader. On April 17, 2010, Jackson was sworn into office as the 7th President of the Libirachi Empire, and immediately closed the Libirachi National Congress and calling new elections for August 10, 2010. Within weeks of assuming the presidency, a slew of new legislation such as the Mandate to the People Act of 2010 were passed by executive decree and President Jackson quickly assembled his cabinet. On October 10th 2010, former president Jacob Zuma was executed on the orders of Jackson, who had initially pledged to hold a trial to decide Zuma's fate.

During Jackson's presidency, several major reforms were made to separate the party and state, whilst also attempting to sideline the authoritarian security agencies which had been formed during Zuma's presidency. Despite being installed with the aid of the armed forces, President Nathan Jackson would go on to have a tenuous relationship with his armed forces; attempts to hold a democratic multi-party presidential election in 2015 were blocked by the armed forces under the leadership of Supreme Commander Kanan Garel, who sought to keep Jackson as a figurehead dictator to allow the armed forces to continue exerting *de-facto* control. In 2019, attempts to reform the armed forces through the Patriot Act and the Route To Freedom Act of 2019 were met with staunch opposition from Garel and the armed forces, who launched a coup d'état in September 2019 in order to remove President Jackson before he could challenge the armed forces' hegemony in the nation.