Racatrazi: Difference between revisions

|map_caption = Racatrazi (green) located on the island Aidalan, southeast of [[Concord]] (grey).

|established_date1 = 1 July 1908<!--Date of first key event-->

|currency = Racatrazi Našdat (RAN) <!--Name/s of currency/ies used in country/territory-->

|time_zone = None (de jure)<br />UTC -1:00 (de facto) <!--e.g. GMT, PST, AST, etc, etc (wikilinked if possible)-->

The Third Republic, which has remained in place since 1999 more or less stably, does away with any ceremonial executive and places the Chief Administrator as both head of state and head of government. The national government is a parliamentary system with the Chief Administrator being the leader of the controlling faction of the Diet. However, the Constitution establishes strict proportionality requirements for not only seats in the legislature but in the entirety of public sector hiring, and the National Elections Administration and Government Ethics Administration are Constitutionally-mandated independent bodies designed as anti-corruption measures. Since 1999, the country has been divided into two provinces—Racatrazi Province in the east and Aidalan Province in the west—each of which is divided into several townships, though the City of Racatrazi takes up a large fraction the land area of Racatrazi Province.

===Time Zone===

Racatrazi has no legally mandated standard time zone. Beginning in the late 19th century with the advent of the telegraph and telephone and the increasing interconnectedness of the world economy, it became the trend in the City of Racatrazi—led primarily by local orcish business owners—to set the time to match the time in [[Elatana]], the much larger Tavari colony to the southeast in [[Arcturia]], which resulted in an adjustment of two hours added to the local solar time, placing it at the same time as the [[Christie Island]] meridian. This was encouraged by the central government in [[Nuvrenon]], which favored as few distinct time zones as possible for reasons of administrative simplicity. With the [[Avtovati Isles]] placed at the same time as [[Rodoka]] (which itself was set at the same time as Crystal Coast, always by convention an hour behind that in Nuvrenon), the Tavari Empire was divided into three time zones where there might otherwise have been five. Outside the city, however, it remained the norm to judge the time by the position of the sun in the sky as seen locally—something seen as at least somewhat sacred by some of the Duarist tiefling natives who worshiped the sun and the moon as symbols of the two gods of their faith.

In 1908, on order of the [[Cabinet of Tavaris#Council of State|Council of State]], Queen Adra IV issued an Order-in-Council declaring that Racatrazi would become "entirely separate, independent from, and outside the administration, control, or responsibility of the Tavari Empire" on 1 July, just two days after it was signed. The order took effect not at midnight but at 2 in the morning, specifically to account for the tieflings who tended to keep solar time. At that time, per the order, all Tavari law was immediately "null, void, unenforceable, and entirely without effect." Racatrazi was left without any law whatsoever, and in the resulting political and economic chaos, numerous people took advantage of the lawlessness to engage in acts of violence. It took months of outright anarchy before militias primarily of orcs equipped with arms smuggled from [[South Hills]] (as supply from Elatana or any other Tavari colony was nearly impossible in its first few years of the Great War as the government diverted it all to the war effort) established the first Republic of Racatrazi in September. The first republic was essentially composed entirely of orcs and did not, as a rule, consider the needs or consult representatives from the native tiefling community when making legislation, and it re-established the time in Racatrazi as being equivalent to that at Rilanon.

After the first republic was violently overthrown in 1941, the second republic—designed to feature power sharing between two co-equal communities of orcs and tieflings—could not reach an agreement on setting a single time zone for the country and so agreed to divide it into two: the native community to the west would keep time at two hours behind Rilanon, while the Tavari community in the east (including the City of Racatrazi) would keep Rilanon time—thus splitting a country 88 kilometers wide into two hours. While this compromise settled the question for a generation from a political standpoint, it served to maintain a very visible level of division between the two communities—it became part of tiefling identity to keep time at UTC -2:00, and part of orcish identity to keep it at UTC. Given the small size of the country, however, the time change when crossing the border became increasingly inconvenient as the City of Racatrazi grew in size and its transit networks expanded to include more and more of the country. Nearly any journey outside the city came to involve a time change, and as technology made real-time communication more and more widely accessible, the difference in time in such a small country became increasingly annoying to deal with. The dawn of the third republic, which arose from a series of assemblies coordinated by the masses of people occupying the national government complex in an uprising, represented a chance to re-open the debate at the same time as many other questions of state institutions were being considered.

The modern status quo was established in 1999 when a clause about time zones was included in the constitution of the Republic declaring that the country "shall not establish through force of law a singular, official national time" and that the country "shall be part of no time zone." However, the constitution allows for the Diet to establish the time to be kept on clocks on government property and forbids provincial and municipal governments from setting different times for their properties. Government offices in Racatrazi follow a time one hour behind Rilanon, representing a compromise between the two time zones and also happening to be the time kept in neighboring South Hills, a major trade partner. Since 1999, the "Minus One Compromise" as it has been called has been adopted by both the tiefling and orcish communities and it has come to be the de facto official time in the country, although it is still not uncommon in the rural areas of the far west of the country to continue to keep time at UTC -2:00.