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DispatchFactbookMiscellaneous

by The Confederation of Soveriegn States. . 3 reads.

Biographies

Janice Rudeles
Born: 1964
Position: President of the Confederation
Tenure: 2020 – present

Janice Rudeles was born in a small town in the State of Alud. Her father was a prominent local businessman and member of the town council. She attended the prestigious University of Jefferson, where she studied international affairs and economics. While at university, she became active in the youth wing of the Liberty Party.

After working in various thinktanks in Jefferson, Rudeles returned to Alud and was elected to the Confederal House of Representatives in 1994. After serving two two-year terms, Rudeles returned to her studies, earning a master’s degree in international political-economics from the University of Cape Liberty in 2000. She was hired as a editor of Liberty House Multimedia’s Foreign Relations Journal and concurrently served as a senior fellow at several thinktanks in Jefferson.

When Tom Caine was elected President in 2004, she was appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs. She served in that post for eight years, earning a reputation as a tough but open-minded negotiator and articulate defender of Caine’s policies. When she left office in 2016, she returned to the world of thinktanks and took a teaching position at the University of Jefferson. After the failed presidential election of 2020, she emerged as the consensus candidate for president at that year’s Constitutional Convention.

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Thomas Caine
Born: 1963
Position: President of the Confederation
Tenure: 2004 – 2016

At university, where he studied business administration, Thomas Caine discovered that he had both a gift for business - founding and publishing a profitable weekly journal while still a student - and the gift of charisma. Caine consistently won high-profile positions in the student government despite a loudly proclaimed lack of interest in politics.

Caine was courted by many companies after graduated, but he chose to join the Confederation's largest firm, Confederated Enterprises, as a manager in its new computer division. Caine quickly became the protégé of Computer Systems Vice President John Hayes. When Hayes became President of CE in 1993, Caine became Computer Systems Vice President. In 1996, Caine left CE to start his own business, with CE funding. In 2001, Caine sold his company back to CE and returned to the company as a member of the board of directors.

Caine launched a surprise presidential campaign in 2004, when he unexpectedly challenged President Ilmar Alderson's renomination at the Liberty Party's presidential nominating convention. Caine won the party's nomination and went on to win the election over a number of candidates, including President Alderson, who was running as a write-in candidate.

Caine, who never married, has been linked to many prominent women and was rumored to be having an affair with his Press Secretary, Shannon Coles. Caine was widely believed to have been a member of the so-called Order of the Invisible Hand. Caine’s decision to join the Knootian International Stabilisation Treaty, combined with the rumors of insidious influences provoked a great deal of opposition to his agenda. Caine's most vocal opponents were religious leaders and political leaders in the former Confederal states of Saxmere and Southland.

Since he left office, Caine has kept a fairly low profile, stepping into the public eye in 2018 on the eve of Saxmere’s secession from the Confederation and again in 2020 when he urged unity in during the crisis following a hung presidential election. He has just partnered with his successor and political opposite, former President Sean Collins, to promote unity and optimism in the now shrunken Confederation.

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Sean Collins
Born: 1958
Position: President of the Confederation
Tenure: 2016 – 2020

Sean Collins began working as an apprentice electrician shortly after high school. He became a master electrician at the age of 28. By that time, he had also become active in trade union politics. He married the former Morgan Beirne, a registered nurse, in 1984. In 1996 he left his work as an electrician behind and became a full-time trade union leader. He earned a degree in political science in 2002, having spent nearly a decade taking night courses.

After Tom Caine was elected president in 2004, Collins led the trade unions in opposition to his libertarian economic policies. Collins played a significant role in founding the Democratic Labour Party in 2005 and became one of its first elected officials when he was elected to the Confederal House of Representatives in 2006.

Collins was elected President in 2016, the last election before his home state of Saxmere seceded. He attempted to rollback many of his predecessors libertarian policies, but was unable to do so with a divided Congress. When Saxmere seceded in 2018, Collins officially moved his residence to the state of Southland in order to remain in office.

After the 2020 presidential election failed to produce a clear winner, Collins joined former President Caine in appealing for unity. When those pleas were ignored and the states of Southland and Deandra seceded from the Confederation, Collins again moved his official residence to New Virginia. He and Caine have now embarked on a series of joint appearances to promote unity and optimism in the now shrunken Confederation.

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Ilmars Alderson
Born: 1940
Died: 2017
Position: President of the Confederation
Tenure: 2000 – 2004

Ilmars Alderson was a career politician and longtime leader of the Liberty Party in the Confederation of Sovereign States. His single term as President was marked by stability, continued prosperity and international irrelevance. Alderson appeared to be headed to an easy re-election until supporters of prominent businessman Thomas Caine managed to, first, deadlock the Liberty Party's nominating convention and, then, swing the nomination to Caine.

A sitting president's loss of his own party's nomination was unprecedented in the history of the Confederation. The loss weighed heavily on Alderson and he declined repeated offers to run as an independent candidate. Nevertheless, he received over 18 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate in the 2004 general election.

Alderson, despite his initial support of Caine as his party's candidate, quickly grew suspicious of President Caine following his election. Alderson soon joined church leaders in the states of Saxmere and Southland in denouncing Caine as a puppet of the so-called Order of the Invisible Hand and of the Knootian government.

While Alderson did not clearly endorse Saxmere's efforts to secede from the Confederation in reaction to Caine's policy, he did support the state's efforts to gain greater autonomy and even extended cautious support to Baron James, the exiled heir to Saxmere' grand ducal throne. After Saxmere gained greater autonomy within the Confederation and restored the Grand Duke, Alderson took the next step in his opposition to Caine and formed a new political party - the National Renewal Party (NRP).

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