Alger Hansen
| Alger Hansen | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait | |
| President of the Council of Ministers of High Fells | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Chief of State of High Fells | |
| Assumed office 1958 | |
| Preceded by | Park Yeong-gi |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Alger Casement Hansen March 29, 1904 Kaenan, High Fells |
| Nationality | Fellsian |
| Spouse(s) | Cleo Hansen |
| Children | Alger Hansen Jr, Conrad Hansen, Isadora Hansen |
Alger Casement Hansen Sr. was a Fellsian politician and autocrat who ruled High Fells as a dictator under the title of Chief of State and later President of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1987. A Christian nationalist, Hansen pursued a program of Anglicization and Christianization during his nearly three-decade reign, with the political and financial support of Sanctaria and Opthelia. His regime was renowned for its extravagance and brutality.
Born into a civil service family, Hansen was a schoolteacher before entering politics. Initially a supporter of the anti-Minjian Clericalist Order, Hansen joined the Domestic Intelligence Secretariat secret police in 1924, and rose steadily through the ranks before being promoted to Director of the Directorate of State Security in 1956. A close confidante of dictator Park Yeong-gi, Hansen triumphed during the power struggle following Park's 1958 death and received his mentor's title as Chief of State.
Hansen's reign featured substantial infrastructure investments which contributed to a post-Great War "economic miracle," yet by the early 1980s the Fellsian economy suffered from high inflation and a debt crisis. Hansen placed High Fells under martial law in 1960, which would persist until after his death in 1988. During his reign, violence and repression were used against political opponents, Minjian, leftists, and Arrivée Fellsians.
By the start of Hansen's third decade of rule, his popularity had suffered due to an economic slowdown and the murder of opposition politician Estes McCall. The eruption of the 1981 Free Judeok Movement, coupled with the action of the United Resistance Front guerrilla group forced Hansen to sign the Comprehensive National Accord in 1984, which included a rigged constitutional referendum which saw Hansen take the new title of President of the Council of Ministers. Hansen's failing health by 1987, after he had received cancer treatment in Opthelia for months, coupled with an economic recession saw protestors demand his removal from office during the June Revolution, which succeeded after military officers sided with the demonstrators. Hansen was imprisoned and died in January 1988.
Early Life and Upbringing[edit | edit source]
Hansen was born in 1904 in the city of Kaenan, High Fells. His father was a bureaucrat with the Ministry of Schooling, allowing Hansen to secure a position as a Mathematics and Religion teacher at Kaenan Central Boys' High School. Along with other faculty, he was a dues-paying member of the Clericalist Order, a secret society dedicated to anti-Minjian agitation, although he renounced the organization by 1924. In that year, he was recruited to the Domestic Intelligence Secretariat and proved adept at the secret police organization's internal politics.
Rise to Power[edit | edit source]
Hansen gradually moved up the ranks of the Domestic Intelligence Secretariat, where a combination of mental acuity, political skill, and good fortune allowed him to avoid the organization's frequent purges. The DIS operated as a form of "security state" with only limited oversight from the civilian government during High Fells's Republican period. Following the 1948 Taesan Coup that brought Park Yeong-gi to power, the Domestic Intelligence Secretariat was reorganized into the Directorate of State Security in 1954. Hansen secured his leadership of the organization in 1956 when the dictator Park Yeong-gi, seeking to secure his hold on power and seeking vengeance for the secession of Lienne, purged the State Security directorate's top leadership. Hansen's geographic base in Kaenan may have contributed to his survival, as Park believed that a Queensgrace-based ring of conspirators aimed to undermine his rule.
Hansen was a cautious supporter of the Taesan Coup; although not a member of the Council of Generals who initiated the overthrow of Prime Minister Dennis Reid's government, Hansen quickly brought the State Security Bureau in line with the military junta. Colonel Park Yeong-gi made overtures to Hansen in 1948, beginning an alliance between the two which would last until Park's 1958 death. Once Park seized power from original junta leader Horace Mullins in September 1948, Hansen became Park's right-hand man. During the 1950s, Hansen's State Security Bureau funded and supported terrorist and subversion attempts in Lienne meant to destabilize the Laeralian-aligned breakaway state. The Liennese Patriotic Front insurgent group was funded and trained in large part by the Bureau, while it's believed that Hansen allowed for High Fells's criminal underworld, dominated by the infamous Desmond "Tubes" McGivney, to grow unmolested in order to destabilize Laeral's northern provinces in Operation Prentice.
Regime[edit | edit source]
After Park Yeong-gi's death in 1958, Hansen smoothly transitioned into executive power as Chief of State, having sidelined or compromised his rivals. Hansen's regime held onto power due to a powerful security state (the Directorate of State Security under Hansen had files on over two million Fellsians) maintained by informants numbering in the tens of thousands. Under Hansen, Park's autarchic economic policies were reversed and the economy was liberalized, particularly as High Fells had remained neutral during the Great War and thus avoided the devastation of its neighbors. Foreign investment was attracted and infrastructure was developed, although widespread corruption from regime insiders meant that much of the economic windfall was squandered on luxuries and individual wealth; notably, the Sapgyo Nuclear Power Plant became a symbol of economic mismanagement as the project went vastly overbudget due to corruption by military officials.
A Christian fundamentalist, Hansen led High Fells down the path of Anglicization in personal matters, mandating the teaching of English and the adoption of English forenames and striking up an alliance with the Fellsian Church. The legal code promulgated under his presidency was substantially socially conservative: divorce was criminalized and women's rights firmly curtailed; for instance, women's testimony counted for one-half of a man's at trial. Under his rule, morality gangs affiliated with the police were given free rein to enforce morality laws on Fellsian streets. The Minjian clergy, particularly the Peichen-based Minjian High Conclave, frequently butted heads with Hansen during the early years of his rule, but largely tempered their criticism after Hansen pledged to cease his interference with the persons and properties of Minjian clerical officials. Certain Minjian clerics, such as Ardent Clement Sim, were among the regime's most dogged opponents.
A robust internal security apparatus maintained Hansen's power domestically. The Directorate of State Security was given free rein as the sole internal security instrument due to Hansen's fears of foreign, particularly Laeralian, subversion as well as ethnic/religious uprisings, while the military, former Chief of State Park's base of support, was gradually marginalized from political power by spreading its responsibilities across new organizations, notably the National Guard and Frontier Security Corps. The Fellsian Parliament was deconstituted and the republican constitution heavily amended; although elections to various electoral bodies took place under Hansen's regime, not one was conducted under free and fair conditions.
In foreign affairs, Hansen pursued a policy of economic liberalization and trade relationships with foreign partners, incentivized with tax breaks and looser regulations. Relations with Laeral remained hostile due to both sides' sponsorship of rebel groups in the other's territory, but Hansen's government turned to Sanctaria and Opthelia as external backers to counterbalance the Laeralian threat.
1980-81 "Year of Uncertainties"[edit | edit source]
At the beginning of the 1980s, the Hansen regime came under unprecedented pressure. A mounting debt crisis caused by a fall in global metal commodities prices led to rapid inflation and widespread misery, particularly among the impoverished underclass. Against this backdrop, opposition politician and human rights lawyer Estes McCall, along with his wife and children, were murdered at their home on the night of October 24, 1980. Although the government sought to blame the killing on organized crime, few believed this explanation and the release of the official government commission charged with investigating the killing, which absolved the government of any responsibility, sparked protests.
The Free Judeok Movement emerged as a popular protest movement in the winter of 1980-1981, prompted by plans for demolition of the Judeok neighborhood in Dongbaek for an urban renewal project. Street protests motivated by these local concerns soon escalated to include demonstrations against cost of living increases and against Hansen's tenure as Chief of State. An unsuccessful assassination attempt against Hansen in March 1981, which the Hansen regime believed to be backed by Laeralian agitators, prompted a nationwide roundup of suspected dissidents which snared an estimated 12,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were innocent.
The crackdown following the attempt on Hansen's life was unsuccessful at curbing opposition to the regime, which continued unabated. This period of chaos, known retrospectively, in a phrase lifted from Hansen's diaries, as the "year of uncertainties," saw an upswing in Minjian militia violence against the state. In April 1981, two Minjian separatist militias merged to form the United Resistance Front as an umbrella organization opposed to the Fellsian state. With support from Laeralian donors (and possibly the Laeralian government), the United Resistance Front began a campaign of armed resistance to the state, centered in the Minjian-majority areas of the country's north.
Final Years of the Regime[edit | edit source]
In prosecuting the war against the United Resistance Front, Hansen pursued scorched-earth repressive measures in the country's north, including the forced migration of the region's citizens into "protected villages" meant to cut off the Minjian guerrillas from their base of support. Faced with Laeralian material support for the URF, Hansen also pursued a military buildup, including the purchase of hundreds of new artillery pieces which were positioned on the southern border in order to bombard Laeralian cities in the event of war. The seizure of a Laeralian cargo ship, Cap Citron, in 1982 on suspicion of conveying arms to the URF caused a diplomatic crisis between the two nations.
In 1984, with the Minjian militias forced into hiding by the military offensive, High Fells and Laeral negotiated a secret agreement, the Duval-Hunt Proviso, which decreased tensions between the two nations and established a hotline between the two capitals. Hansen followed up on this with the Comprehensive National Accord, a ceasefire between his government and certain factions of the United Resistance Front which seemingly included concessions to the opposition. The URF was allowed to operate with a largely free hand in certain remote areas under its control, in exchange for an end to attacks on civilians and government troops.
Seemingly adopting a more conciliatory tone with critics, Hansen also announced a constitutional referendum to be held in August 1984, coupled with the release of certain political prisoners. The 1984 constitutional referendum, which passed with a reported 77% in favor in a rigged election, saw Hansen take on the newly-established role of President of the Council of Ministers, appointed by yet not formally accountable to the Fellsian Parliament. His son, Alger Hansen Jr, was appointed to the new position of State Counsellor, in a move widely interpreted as an attempt to create a family dynasty.
June Revolution and Fall from Power[edit | edit source]
Legacy[edit | edit source]
Hansen remains a controversial figure in Fellsian history. During his tenure as High Fells's chief executive, Hansen and his family and associates are believed to have stolen an estimated 12 billion Sanctarian Pounds from the state, with the exact total uncertain. He and his wife Cleo were known for their lavish parties, as well as the construction of a new Presidential Palace. Although Hansen presided over a resource boom following the Great War, much of the economic growth was concentrated among regime insiders, although standards of living did gradually climb among the rural poor.
Hansen sought to create a family dynasty and intended to pass on his position at the head of state to his eldest son, Alger Hansen Jr. Following the 1984 Fellsian Constitutional Referendum, which saw Hansen take on the newly-created role of President of the Council of Ministers, Hansen Jr was appointed to the new constitutional role of State Counsellor. Following the June Revolution and Hansen Sr's death, Hansen Jr aimed to become Lord Chancellor of High Fells and started the Liberal Party as a vehicle for his political aspirations, only to die in 2001 when the small plane he was piloting crashed. Conrad Hansen, Hansen Sr's second son, became Lord Chancellor of High Fells in 2007 yet was removed from office within a year.