Hello to all readers, and apologies for the few days that have passed since the previous edition of my memoirs. We ended that chapter with Croatia's first offensive war, growing dissatisfaction at home, and the beginnings of an idea to form a political opposition. In this edition, we finally reach the crowning moment of my political career and the story of how I got there. So, let's begin.

Croatia's First Opposition Party

The dissatisfaction mentioned in the previous edition continued to grow. More and more players were working for the state, yet they could not always receive their supplies because shortages of companies, NPCs, and other limitations prevented us from producing enough.

One of my proposals was to lower taxes and allow every citizen to play and work however they wanted, freely participating in the market. The state itself would operate according to the same capitalist principles, following the Polish and Swedish models of the time.

Manga mocked and dismissed these ideas. As a result, shortly before the March 2025 elections, several of us founded the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), creating Croatia's first real opposition party. Manga responded with insults, but he did not have the full picture of what we had prepared.

In addition to the dissatisfied players who had joined our party, we had secured the support of several people outside it. From the moment he arrived, Nebra had made it clear that he would not align himself with either political camp and would remain independent. Nevertheless, he agreed to cast his vote for us to help remove Manga from power.

Appex, meanwhile sold us his vote for two beers in the town center of Ploče after some persuasion from his RL friend Fuhrer, who was one of the leading figures behind the growing opposition. The HSS silver bullet, however, came in the form of Jiren and Aldrich. Both remained members of Manga's party and were still on its electoral list. This meant that even in the event of a narrow defeat, we potentially had two members of Congress who could cross the aisle and support us in removing Manga from power.

Then election night arrived. The atmosphere on the channel was heated, but Manga remained convinced that, together with his bots, he held an overwhelming majority. Then the daily change arrived—and so did the shock. Not even our own party had expected to win outright. We were hoping for something around a 55–45 result in Manga's favor, which would still have allowed us to take control of Congress with the support of Aldrich and Jiren.

Instead, we won. Manga was stunned. It took him a little while to process what had happened. And then he got angry...

The Aftermath of the Election

We offered Manga cooperation, albeit on our terms. From his perspective, however, that was never an option. Shortly after the election, he launched a declaration of war against Australia, even though we knew that such a move could provoke Swedish intervention and potentially involve the WET alliance, which at the time was the second-strongest power on the server. Fortunately, because we controlled Congress, we were able to stop the move.

Instead, we focused our efforts on negotiations with SAF and began working out the remaining details of a NAP that we intended to sign once we won the presidential election a week later. My preferred candidate for president was Motorina. He was an experienced player in this type of game and a battle-hardened former CP from a previous game, where he had also gained some experience fighting against Manga.

Unfortunately, Motorina declined. It was therefore decided that I would run instead, despite never having served as CP before. Manga did not even make it to the presidential election. Frustrated by our refusal to support his aggression against Australia, he decided to impeach himself. We rejected his first attempt, but he remained persistent and eventually succeeded in impeaching himself just two days before the election.

We subsequently signed the NAP with SAF and established good relations with what remained of their community.

The New Government's First Challenges

Meanwhile, Macedonia had gone to war with Albania and occupied its regions. As a result, Manga's earlier plan to rent Shkodër was effectively dead—and Croatia was not willing to simply accept the new situation. Some Croatian players began fighting for Albania, partly out of frustration with the Macedonian players who had fought for SAF during our own war. Macedonia responded by threatening that Croatia would lose its SAF colonies if our players did not stop.

At that point, I had no desire for another conflict. There was, however, one thing I was unwilling to accept: threats. No matter how difficult my position might be, I was not going to allow another country to dictate our actions through intimidation. And so it began.

An alliance with Serbia was signed, and the plan was set in motion. Serbia would attack Macedonia from the north, while Croatia would support Albania from the south. Together, we hoped to force Macedonia to abandon its occupation of Albania and accept a NAP.

The war began, and Macedonia proved considerably stronger than we had anticipated. With Aiden and Demetrios on their side, our two young communities struggled against them, largely because of our inferior equipment. Then something happened that we had not anticipated at all.

Korea intervened.
Their involvement had not been part of our plans, but it completely changed the course of the war. Within a week, Korean tanks defeated the Macedonians, stopped their counteroffensive against Niš and Subotica, and forced them to accept negotiations for a NAP under which Albania would regain complete freedom. Macedonia's only demand was to receive a certain amount of CC so they could maintain four NPCs while relocating their companies. It was a condition everyone considered reasonable. Everyone except the Albanians.

Unfortunately, Albania rejected the NAP, meaning Croatia's original objective was never achieved. What followed were two boomerangs that came flying straight back into our faces.

One of them we expected.

The other had never even crossed our minds.

Although this article covered only two or three weeks of events between late March and early April, I will leave the rest of my first presidential term for the next edition.

Thank you for reading, and consider purchasing Premium for additional memories and material from this period.