America's Funniest President: Mo Udall Presidency & Beyond

So yeah, any questions or thoughts now that the State Union of Sovereign Republics is officially with a profile?
It would be interesting to see how this state will deal with SATMIN rights moving forward, being a secular state. I doubt we'll see wide-sweeping reforms or societal changes but simply tolerating the existence of SATMIN subcultures or celebrities is a realistic possibility, which is far better than what's occurring OTL.
 
1993- Return of a King
1993- Return of a King


Coalition Cracked Apart
Ethiopia has reached a breaking point... within its transitional government. The attempts at trying to establish a vote for Eritrea to leave have failed with the death of its leader along with the in-fighting in the group having snowballed into factionalism and even violence. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front was on the verge of breaking apart. Their method of trying to maintain power by allowing only ethnic-based parties was called out and without support from the world, was deprived of major legitimacy. Additionally, they underestimated the popularity of the late king when he came to visit over to his homeland. Trying to promote peace and unity, he would provide plenty of support over for Moa Anbessa, a political movement that called for restoring the monarchy, albeit as a consitutional monarchy. It rejected the plans of dividing up the state by ethnic lines and preached on unity, past history and glory along with the promise of a better future. While the EPRDF would block the Moa Anbessa front/party from participating, it would not stop its growth. When the king was killed and his son, Zera Yacob Amha Selassie, would ascend to the crown, he would lead on ahead with the party, his assassinated father now a martyr. While details on the would-be assassin remained unknown, most of the blame would still fall on the EPRDF for their negligance, which just charged all the previous complaints had against them with a renewed fervor.

As the EPRDF began cracking under the strain, a new coalition was standing against them, that of the Moa Anbessa and their growing allies. They would be pressuring more and more of the EPRDF to let in non-ethnic based parties or scrapping the whole system planned on federalizing the nation under ethnic lines. Without much outside support, the EPRDF began hemorrhaging key members and supporters who were prioritizing their own political careers or livelihoods over the coalition's and began defecting or just plain exiting it, causing a growing eruption of in-fighting, both within the constitutent parties of the coalition and the coalition itself. One brutal moment was the death of the EPLF leader from cerebral malaria and that caused them to finally begin cracking. Unable to rule effectively and such, this would soon snowball into growing problems.

Widescale protests and marches were being held in the major cities, calling for a change in government. For the transitional government to step down and for a new one to come and take place.

Rebuilding a Nation
Eventually, the coalition could not hold and as more people joined over the Moa Anbessa movement, they would finally collapse. The EPRDF, who fought for so long to try and free Ethiopia, would itself break from its own problems, that of support of ethnic federalism. And now, with this, the Moa Anbessa held the reins of the table as discussions were held now over the formation of Ethiopia's new government.

One of the big names that were involved was Meles Zenawi. Despite the interim president's view over regarding ethnic federalism and leading the EPRDF, many of his other ideas for helping Ethiopia was found to be valuable by Moa Anbessa and respected him enough to have him be included in much of the discussions. Zenawi would help put into place many of the reforms such as freedom of religion and the press, along with plans to expand schools, land and agriculture reform to ensure that droughts would not plague the nation once more. During these discussions, one foreign consultant compared some of the ethnic issues of Ethiopia over with Yugoslavia and noted that they needed to avoid what happened there. At the same time, the greater study of Yugoslavia revealed many potential ideas over on how they successfully handled a market socialist economy and what could be learned from there. It provided good alternatives to just privatizing everything over there and help try and avoid exploitation.

However, it would still see the end of ethnic federalism as the country would be divided up in different ways, more focused on natural geography, population numbers and other factors to ensure a balance. The only exception of sorts was Eritrea, due to already being an entity. The question over whether Eritrea should be independent or not could not really be ignored forever though trying to figure that in the leadership vacuum in the moment would be impractical. Ultimately, Eritrea would get a referendum over in 1994 to decide their fate on whether to remain with Ethiopia or secede. 1994 was insisted on by the remains of the EPLF, believing that if they delayed it longer than it needed, it would kill the momentum for the movement. Despite this plan though, they still assisted in drawing out plans like everyone else, including on what if the people of Eritrea voted to remain and thus draw out the new federal boundaries to avoid the ethnic federalism.

Return of the Lion
In the middle of May, specifcially between the Ethiopian holidays of Freedom Day and what would be known as Derg Downfall Day would be a new holiday. Crowning Day, referring to the coronation of Zera Yacob Amha Selassie, officially declaring the nation as a constitutional monarchy. Unsurprisingly, many heads of state or their representatives would becoming to witness the coronation, especially those from Africa. For many people, it would be like a long and complicated nightmare would finally be over.

And televised for people in the nation and the world to see the return of the Ethiopian monarch. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Zera Yacob Amha Selassie, Elect of God, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and King of Kings of Ethiopia had now taken his mantle and returned to become the ruler of Ethiopia. He maintained the title of emperor and thus he was the one of two heads of state to have the title of Emperor, the only other one being the Emperor of Japan. He would be there alongside interim president Meles Zenawi, who would be stepping down by the end of the year as the title of president would be dissolved.

Moa Anbessa would remain around, transforming into a center-right party and would become one of the modern parties of the Ethiopian Parliament. In a display of magnanimity, Emperor Zera Selassie would pardon the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (informally known as Ihapa) and permitting them to function as an offical party, though they have now renamed themselves as the Ethiopian Freedom Party, becoming a center-left party. The All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement would not be as lucky though by now, most of the party members have exited politics or switched parties, effectively rendering it dead for the time being. As for the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front itself though, most of the parties that made up the coalition have collapsed and the remnants have come together to form the Ethiopian Peoples' Party and would be permitted to serve and continue as an official party for the left-wing. Meles Zenawi wold become the head of the new Ethiopian Democratic Party. This along with some new parties being formed from inspiraton of other nations, such as the Ethiopian Green Party.

While more work had to be done regarding helping Ethiopia, the international support along with some investment and funds coming in to help out with the nation, thus providing a new dawn over for Ethiopia.
 
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It would be interesting to see how this state will deal with SATMIN rights moving forward, being a secular state. I doubt we'll see wide-sweeping reforms or societal changes but simply tolerating the existence of SATMIN subcultures or celebrities is a realistic possibility, which is far better than what's occurring OTL.
Well, with the US going and launching things at the forefront with civil rights, it will go and push the question forward though as for the SUSR, I imagine that without the chaos along with some of the pressure, it would definitely be alot better than OTL, especially since Russia or the other nations will not be a major fustercluck.

Though of course, earlier pushing will show rammifications down the line, especially for certain nations.
 
What led Etheopia to bring back it's monarchy in this TL?
Here, a bit of luck and guile. To summarize an earlier post, the King at the time decided to visit the nation and rather than make a fuss about a burial, decided to hold it off for now and instead see his homeland. He would help galvanize the monarchist movement while visiting, preaching unity and reform before he would be martyred by being killed. His assassination accelerated the movement and created someone to unify around while his son took the helm. The transitional government meanwhile, already in trouble and dealing worse than OTL because of a lack of US approval with the ethnofederal plan and exclusion of non-ethnic parties, would get a larger loss of credability. This would cause a large amount of in-fighting and tensions, made worse when the leader of Eritrea's movement dies of cerebral malaria (OTL he was saved in time by Israeli doctors), thus even causing fractures there. Ultimately, the movement grows too strong and the transitional government coalition breaks, thus letting the monarchists go and ascend.
 
Any other questions or thoughts on the Sovereign Union by the way? And yeah, everyone would have their own national flags along with the SUSR flag, which would be like OTL, barring Russia's flag, which I showed in a prior post.
 
Any other thoughts or questions? Ethiopia being a monarchy will have some interesting effects down the line along with other events
How does the Rastafarian movement handle the return of the Monarchy? IIRC they idolized Haile and the royal family so it would be interesting to see if this will had knock-on effects on the religion.
 
How does the Rastafarian movement handle the return of the Monarchy? IIRC they idolized Haile and the royal family so it would be interesting to see if this will had knock-on effects on the religion.
They would likely become more politically active given the ascension of the throne and combined that with the political reforms and changes, though the third wave feminism and so on would clash, with sectarian divides regarding the treatment of women. I could see the grow somewhat, but also suffer from the divisions regarding modernization and division.

I think Ethiopia may see them similarly to most of the Islamic world saw the "Nation of Islam". I imagine would be more than a bit awkward or confusing.
 
Summer 1993- Crushed Counter-Coup
Summer 1993- Crushed Counter-Coup

New Qatar Flag.png

Flag of the Republic of Qatar

Summer would be heating up. While the Askew Administration would prepare to unveil what they said would be their project from the past several years, other nations would begin experiencing their own turmoil in the summer heat. One that got the big attention was none other than Qatar. After the coup in which the prince would force his father out of power with the help of the Jadid Baathists and transform the nation from a monarchy into a republic under Jadid-Baathism (or Neo-Baathism) ideology, the clock was ticking on a potential counter-coup against him. Unsurprisingly, an attempt would be made over for the former king to try and regain his power and more unsurprisingly, the Qatari government foresaw this and proceeded to crush the counter-coup attempt. Thanks to the experience and preparations done, many were captued and the counter-coup attempt quickly crushed. However, they were also expecting that the coup would be backed by foreign powers, likely their neighbors and they began looking in, squeezing the information out of the would-be counter-coup planners. The backers were Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia as the foreign backers of the counter-coup attempt. [1] For many of the Baathists, they saw this as a golden opportunity, at least when they would confirm the information through greater use of espionage and so on. The opportunity to take down their enemies and continute to spread their influence relatively unopposed by the greater powers of the world, since they can claim they are acting defensively to protect themselves and retaliate against such severe inteference. With the chance of violence becoming more likely over in the region, oil prices, already dealing with the global intiative to use no more than necessary, would likely spike in the near future, with the various nations preparing for further increases in oil prices and the socio-economical rammifications that would come from such.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslavic Wars kept going on; with a peace reached between the Bosnians and Croatians, they focused back on the conflict over against the forces backed by Yugoslavia. And the troubles were showing over at their home as well. Large protests would erupt, protesting against Slobodan Milošević's regime in Belgrade and it would be follwoed by the arrest of the opposition leader Vuk Drašković and his wife Danica. [2] All this in the background of conflict though a ceasefire would be held over to try and find a negotiation. NATO along with the SUSR was having a rather unorthodox idea on how to handle the situation and it was one that they've discussed with Bosnian leader, who was understandably not too happy with the idea. However, it would buy them alot of time and the compromise could be enough over to force Milošević into a corner since regardless of what he chooses, it would likely backfire on him. In fact, one reason for the unorthodox comproise was that it could disrupt the side. It would be proposed over in the following months.

History keeps moving forward as Venezuela would get a ne wpresident while Mongolia would hold its first direct presidential elections. Andrew Wiles would win worldwide fame after presenting his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that had been unsolved for more than three centuries. Support would come over for the affected nations due to Typhoon Koryn causing massive damage to the Philippines, China and Macau. During helping with reconstruction efforts, the Askew Administration would have talks with China regarding North Korea regarding what happens to it in the future, hoping to establish positive relations along with helping talks between it and South Korea. The G7 Summit over in Tokyo, Japan would be discussing various topics, with the Middle East conflict and the likely oncoming increase of petroleum prices. This also tied in with the various environmental efforts that each nation was making, regarding the progress made and what else needed to be done along with new developments, such as the Gen III Nuclear reactors about to come into operation a few years early ahead of the original schedule over in Japan while the completion of the Americans' integral fast reactor would be getting closer to completion. Overall, it would be quite a productive summer, especially with massive changes coming. [2]

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[1]- Information and phrasing from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Qatari_coup_d'état_attempt
[2]- Information and phrasing from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993
 
anyone wanna guess what’s coming with either of the scenarios?

Also, yeah that’s Qatar’s new flag. Has the colors of Arab Revolution though maroon is used instead of red.
 
What’s going on with Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Pat Schroeder?
Jesse Jackson- Unsure. He may have a position in the Askew Administration if I can come up with something for him, but beyond, well he's prbably gonna be quite pleased with the various policies that the Udall and Askew administrations have done. If he doesn't have a formal political role, I could see him starting preparing his son for politics. Any input or suggestions here?

Gary Hart- Probably go back to his law practice like OTL.

Pat Schroeder- Likely on the verge of retiring if she hasn't lost yet her House seat to a challenger. Possible chance of aligning with the Unizens.
 
Jesse Jackson- Unsure. He may have a position in the Askew Administration if I can come up with something for him, but beyond, well he's prbably gonna be quite pleased with the various policies that the Udall and Askew administrations have done. If he doesn't have a formal political role, I could see him starting preparing his son for politics. Any input or suggestions here?

Gary Hart- Probably go back to his law practice like OTL.

Pat Schroeder- Likely on the verge of retiring if she hasn't lost yet her House seat to a challenger. Possible chance of aligning with the Unizens.
Jackson likely runs for Mayor of Chicago and maybe a Congressional seat representing Chicago later on. I could see him running for Senate too in the 2000s probably, perhaps in 2002 or 2004.
 
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