727 East Owlian general election

**General elections** were held in the East Owlian Republic in February 727 to elect the 33 members of the East Owlian Senate.

An attempted attack on the capital by an unidentified terrorist group in the spring of 724 would come to be the first in a line of events leading up to early elections being called three years later. While the official investigation into the incident would take months, it took only until the next morning before the first consul himself made a public statement decrying the international community for meddling in East Owlian affairs and funding terrorism. The opposition was quick to attack his comments for being vague and undefined, especially Labor leader Mira Saleh who made headlines for asking the first consul if he was seeing ghosts in a speech to the Senate shortly thereafter.

Overall, the Cittanova incident spurred new investments in the military with a notable increase in defense spending came the fall budget. New military technology was acquired and efforts were made to showcase these developments to the people and other nations alike, such as when a new ambassador was escorted to Eisarna on foot across the Lantern Sea wearing state of the art frost walker boots. At the same time, prospects of new mining ventures on Santa Rosa island in the south laid the foundations for an economic boom with unemployment numbers even hitting the negative at one point as a result of successful job programs. This sense of progress and stability helped further improve the approval numbers of Xristos Ferrari and his right-wing coalition, with opinion polls showing a level of popular support for government policy not seen since the days of Aevin Civetta.

Not all was happy and well within the conservative government however as the two coalition parties were divided on two of the most pressing issues of the day: immigration and foreign policy. When news came of the raid on the Iron Keep in the summer of 726, the Cheridonian Railway project planned to connect the city of Elitre to Eisarna's capital became a source of great contention within the conservative government. Xristos Ferrari had tolerated its continuation despite his previous campaign to pull out of the project, while Zealot Democratic governor Nicola Pazzerello made it a top priority for the regional administration in Marenostro. In December that year, the National Unity Party pushed through new supposedly temporary legislation imposing stricter border controls against Eisarna for the next 5 years, effectively ending the previous open border agreement. This was the last straw for Zealot Democracy, who saw the special relationship with Eisarna as an important diplomatic cornerstone, and Giorgio Cespuglio declared his party's withdrawal from the coalition in January 727.

Efforts were made to form a new government, but with the Senate deadlocked between three equally sized blocs of nationalists, liberal-conservatives and socialists, neither willing to compromise, this failed. Two weeks later, a motion to dissolve the legislature was passed and President of the Senate Giovanni Sullarupese called for new elections to be held.

The 727 election would come as a shock for the opposition from left to right, who campaigned with great fervor on their various core issues like open borders, civil rights protection and the eradication of poverty, expecting another election year in line with the new normal that had been established after the crisis of 708. Pre-election polls had placed the National Unity Party somewhere between 25-30%, but when districts started reporting in the map was painted blue from Boscaiola to Streghetta. Xristos Ferrari's campaign to close the borders and build a wall against Eisarna was well received in this day and age where pillagers could seemingly attack at any moment, and long-standing nations like the thousand-year Vanese monarchy had been brought down only ten years ago in a communist revolution. In addition, the East Owlian Labor Party was losing hold of the working class as many turned their eye to the National Unity Party and their promises of developing the East Owlian economy into an industrial powerhouse with a job for every citizen.

Following the landslide victory for the National Unity Party, Xristos Ferrari stayed on as first consul and laid the groundwork for the 728 constitutional convention which would come to end the First Republic and replace the parliamentary system of the day with a new framework for direct consular elections and a bicameral Senate from 729 onwards.