Good evening to all of you from The South Pacific. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about issues. Issues which I think are involved or should be involved in this election season. I’m a candidate for election as Minister of Crazy.

In this election season Government Island is telling us a bright new Defender future is happening. It claims new Ministries are going to revolutionise our region. It says that new alliances are coming, WA voting blocks are on the way, and that multilateral organisations will be formed. But, in fact, things seem just about as they were back last year. Remember, new alliances were coming then. WA voting blocks were on the way. Multilateral organisations were going to be created. Remember, too, the upsurge and the optimism lasted through the election and for the first few months. And then the roof fell in. The new alliances were meaningless. The WA voting block never appeared, and nor did the multilateral organisations. Now, in this election we’re told it’s all going to happen this time. If history repeats itself we will be talking WA voting blocks and multilateral organisations a year from now.

An effort will be made in this campaign to suggest that there aren't any real differences between my opponents and myself. Well, I believe there are and these differences are fundamental. One of them has to do with our approach to government. My opponents all have long experience in Government Island. They are all part of the Fudgetropolis Establishment. I have always been outside of government.

I had never in my life thought of seeking or holding public of office. Whilst every election people insist on voting for me I have never campaigned in one. In my own mind, I am citizen representing my fellow citizens against the institution of government. When we begin thinking of government as we instead of they, we’ve been here too long. Well, I believe that attitude would be beneficial in Fudgetropolis.

My opponents place their faith in the Fudgetropolis Establishment. This has been evident in their appointment of former Cabinet members and longtime government workers to positions in their Ministries. Well, I don't believe that those who have been part of the problem are necessarily the best qualified to solve those problems.

The truth is, Fudgetropolis has taken over functions that don't truly belong to it. In almost every case it has been a failure. Now, understand, I’m speaking of those programs which logically should be administered by individual legislators and at the in-game level. Media is a classic example. Voices that are raised now and then urging a government takeover of media don’t realize that the past failures of media are due to government interference.

Sometimes government excesses are so great that we laugh at them. But they are costly laughs. For years people have said that MoRA is too big, too bureaucratic. Now, Fudgetropolis has been loud in its promise to do something about this blizzard of bureaucracy in MoRA. And they made good. They made two more MoRA’s, with two more Ministers.

Ask the people of Osirs, Balder, The Pacific, Lazarus, and all the others; ask them what its like to live in a region where the government is Number One. I don't want to live in that kind of region, and I don’t think you do either.

I don't believe the people I’ve met on almost every island of this Coalition are ready to consign this, the great region of freedom, to the dust bin of history, along with the bones of dead civilizations of the past. Call it mysticism, it you will, but I believe Max Barry had a divine purpose in creating this region to be found by those who had a special love of freedom. From our antiquarians to our newly founded nations, we've come from every corner NationStates and we've become a new breed in this game. We’re South Pacificans and we have a rendezvous with destiny. We spread across this region, rearing Llamas and wearing lampshades, and we did it without a Ministry of Engagement or a World Assembly Programme.

Indeed, we gave birth to an entirely new concept in this game. We created government as our servant, beholden to us and possessing no powers except those voluntarily granted to it by us. Now a self-anointed elite in Fudgetropolis would have us believe we are incapable of guiding our own destiny. They practice government by mystery, telling us its too complex for our understanding. Believing this, they assume we might panic if we were to be told the truth about our problems.

Why should we become frightened? No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than the South Pacificans residing in this region today. There isn’t any problem we cant solve if government will give us the facts. Tell us what needs to be done. Then, get out of the way and let us have at it.

Recently on one of my campaign trips I was doing a question-and-answer session on the RMB, and suddenly I received a question from a little nation who couldn’t have been over six or seven weeks old. I’d heard the question before but somehow in their asking it, they threw me a little bit. They said, why do you want to be Minister of Crazy? Well, I tried to tell them about giving government back to the people; I tried to tell them about turning authority back to the legislators and in-game community, and so forth; winding down the bureaucracy. It might have been an answer for forum going nations, but I knew that it wasn’t what that little nation wanted, and I left very frustrated. It was on the way to the next stop that I said I wish I had it to do over again because I Id like to answer their question.

Well, maybe I can answer it now. I would like to go to Fudgetropolis. I would like to be Minister of Crazy, because I would like to see this region become once again a region where a little six-week old nation can grow up knowing the same freedom that I knew when I was six weeks old, growing up in the South Pacific. If this is the South Pacific you want for yourself; if you want to restore government not only of and for but by the people; to see the South Pacifican spirit unleashed once again. To make this region the shining, golden hope Max intended it to be, I’d like to hear from you. Write, or send a PM I’d be proud to hear your thoughts and your ideas.

Thank you, and good night.