David Venkesel-Sarot

David von Kessel-Sarot, alternatively spelled as Venkessel or known as DVKS, is a Lausán politician and scholar residing in the United Socialist States of Eldham; living in the town of Suluzar in the State of Adalor.

He currently serves as the Chairman of the Wiki Reform Committee under the Commission of Culture, having done so since 261 TE, a Member of the Central Committee of the CPUSSE since 266, and Seat VIII of the Supreme People's Assembly since 284. He also holds the title of being the oldest person in the nation.

Origins (46-256 T.E)
In Lore; David was born as the "Angelus Diabolus" by the supreme being of the Nether and was sent to Rathnir after it understood he wasn't the kind of devil it wished for. He'd end up finding himself in the far-away Republic of Aldakan, a tyrannical Military Dictatorship, where he'd grow up an orphan and as an energetic student of Journalism, History, and Politics under the mentorship of Maxwell Lazo, a Libertarian Socialist activist who was also a spy for the Aldakanean National Insurrectionist Army, which was later obliterated by the Government forces.

Aged 19, Angelus moved to Carvay in hopes of starting his career in politics, although the country by then was incredibly oligarchic, corrupt, and unstable in his view. He wouldn't stay there long as only a week after he moved in, Carvay began to rapidly decline and so he began roaming the world as a lone Vagabond for the next two centuries.

At the age of 32 Angelus temporarily settled in Urnu-Arrak in order to rest from a long few years of traveling. During his stay he made sure to visit as many libraries and culturally-significant places as possible because of his fascination with Earthling cultures. At some point he decided to finally get a job as he began struggling financially and was employed at a small retirement home inside the city. This decision ended up being important as the elder he was to take care of was no other than his former mentor; Maxwell Lazo.

The reunion wasn't as emotional as might've been expected. Maxwell by then was in his 70s without a leg or an eye, and suffered from Alzheimer's but Angelus remained dedicated. He cared for Maxwell for 5 years and throughout this time learned of the annihilation of the Socialist movement backhome, and the total collapse of Aldakan as he focused on research to try to help Maxwell's memory. He also found out that Maxwell had established a large orphanage in the middle of a forest in Yimmu-Audal, which Angelus showed much interest in as a half-Angel. And upon Maxwell's peaceful death in the year 83; Angelus was named the new head of the Lazo orphanage.

From 83 to 131 Angelus ran the Lazo orphanage and became widely popular in the rurals although under a different name. He greatly expanded the orphanage and made sure it was as comfortable as possible for everyone, offering good wages and a high quality of life there. This time was perhaps the calmest in his life but it ended with his resignation since, upon hearing of the formation of the Imperium, decided he wants to return to roaming the world and learning of its cultures.

Return to Aldakan (133-136 TE)
His journey led him to the United Burgamerian Socialist Republic, the first Left-wing nation he had ever actually been in. During his stay, he came to a realisation that Rathnir was supposedly doomed to be eternally ruled by despotic and authoritarian forces, viewing Burgamere as a failed nation, and because of this he grew an interest in the nearby continent of Eldham, which he would only find himself going to a long while after. Before Angelus was able to set up any real trip to Eldham he was approached instead by operatives from ANIA who had come to Burgamere several decades before in pursuit of Maxwell. The operatives brought Angelus the news that the Aldakanean revolution had finally succeeded after a long and brutal civil war and that they required assistance in building up the new regime, so they requested assistance from him by letting him into the new Central Committee of the Socialist Front of Aldakan, the interim Government, which he accepted.

Once he arrived in Aldakan the nation was a shadow of its former self: the economy was nearly non-existant, most of the cities were in ruins, and the Government was in chaos. Upon his inauguration to the Central Committee Angelus adopted the name "Fonsie Valleida". Initially he was one of the low ranking members of the 20-member Committee, but he quickly built his way up the ranks by becoming an efficient compromiser and reformer until he was named the "Secretary of Justice" which gave him the task of writing the new Constitution of Aldakan.

The task of writing the constitution was rough, and Angelus faced many challenges on the path especially on the issue of what system of democracy should the new Aldakan adopt; the Left-Faction supported establishing a One-Party state in accordance to the philosophy of Democratic Centralism while the Right-Faction, which at the tame Angelus belonged to, was more in favour of re-establishing some sense of Multi-Party politics. And after over three years of discussions, Angelus was finally able to reveal the Constitution of the new "Second Aldakanean Republic".

The "Heavenly Constitution" as it was nicknamed (due to Angelus being a literal Angel) established a Multi-Party Democracy with an incredibly detailed legal code to attempt to fight any efforts to destroy the revolution. The elements of the constitution Angelus was most proud of were the inclusion of a two four-year term limit and extreme anti-corruption measures. After the constitution was introduced he ended up deciding on leaving Aldakan, as the very process of establishing democracy there tired him and he did not wish to again see his dreams collapse, and so he went back to his Vagabond journey. And the next 100+ years of his life remain unknown.

Political Beginnings in the USSE (256-265 T.E)
After a long few decades of roaming around the rest of the world Angelus, by then aged 209, made an incredibly brief stay (no more than a month) in Redoriv Angelus adopted a new name: "Dave Van Sarot". And following a short attempt to join the Statenland Forward party, Van Sarot abandoned the country after noticing the lack of activity in it, and continued onwards to Sylvania, where he stayed in for also only a month, as after a short career as the head farmer of the town of Alzaria, he finally settled on joining the United Socialist States of Eldham upon noticing that it shares much of his political beliefs. Not long after he became a citizen, Van Sarot joined the Communist Party (CPUSSE) and announced his candidacy for the Central Committee in the elections of 256 T.E on a Pragmatic and Populist platform, and attended the inauguration of General Secretary Magerius Ukumari the same day, joining the Commission of Culture a day later. Van Sarot became one of the many "New Generation" candidates to run in the Central Committee election, but from the beginning his victory was not expected as he was in a field of 12 candidates, only 7 having the ability to win. He was eliminated on the first round after winning 8 votes, a single vote less than what was needed to continue to the second round. He accepted the results and immediately congratulated his fellow New Gen candidate; Vyacheslav Von Kessel, later endorsing Pakartov Von Kessel as he began setting his sights on the other upcoming elections for the USSE.

Following a short vacation and days of focusing on his writing of the biographies of General Secretaries Magerius and Rosa Ortangon; Van Sarot announced his candidacy for the 260 T.E elections for the Supreme People's Assembly, running on the same platform as usual while announcing his support for fellow candidates Vyacheslav Von Kessel, Arika Ronango'O, and Ortangon as a self-declared "Pragmatic Populist" candidate. He'd end up losing the election on the first round. From this point forward David stated he will never seek to be part of the Executive Government ever, to focus on becoming an SPA representative and a member of the Central Committee.

Upon hearing of a planned re-establishment of the Diplomatic unit of the USSE's Government David enrolled in the University of Akaishiro in order to get a degree in diplomacy, using the opportunity to also start officially learning Lo'Oi. Only 3 months into his studies he was approached by Magerius to become one of the new generation of diplomats, which he gladly accepted, and thus in 262 finally achieving his dream of becoming a diplomat, being assigned to the United Commonwealth to establish friendly ties. This served convenient to David because of his great interest in the Commonwealth's history and mainly its politics and democracy. And not long after he arrived he attained citizenship, voting in the referendum on the monarchy which was conveniently held only 3 months into his mission. During one of his first few visits David adopted his son: Skott Zaragulov, who ran on the list of the Alliance of Social Democrats in the 1073 ACA elections for the Sejm. Sadly, Skott died shortly after from an unknown disease.

The FAR Act (259-262 T.E)
At some point after the campaign, Dave was adopted by Pakartov Von Kessel to be his son, thus officially changing his name to "David Von Kessel-Sarot" and for the first time being a member of a real family. At the same time he began cooperating with his now-cousin Vyacheslav Von Kessel to truly start his wiki reforms for the USSE as he was appointed "Chairman of the Commission of Wiki Reform" on 261.

In mid-259 T.E David proposed the " Fair and Active Representation Act " as a referendum, proposing to limit the amount of offices one can hold. Making General Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Premier, SPA Representative, and Commissioner mutually exclusive positions. While a popular referendum, this put him at odds against Ortangon and Ronango'O as the two opposed the inclusion of Commissioners and the Representatives. The initial FAR Act either way passed with support from figures such as Aleksandr Serebra II, Kineox Von Kessel, Ren Serebra, and more in a vote of 29-7. But those opposing it also had an issue with the wording, which in the end would just lead to loopholes and thus making the act irrelevant. So in late 260 Arika proposed a Referendum on Constitutional Clarification, but excluded the clauses about the SPA and the Commissioners, which indeed angered David for he believed it made the whole referendum entirely pointless.

With Arika's proposal struggling to attain the needed amount of signatures to go to a vote; David took the opportunity and proposed the " Referendum on Constitutional Clarification, written in accordance to the original intentions of the FAR Act " in late 261 T.E, and after an arduous campaign which saw David personally speak with voters to support his proposal his version succeeded and was sent to a national vote while Arika's version was basically forgotten. Within the first day of the vote on the referendum it won 28 votes in favour with only 2 against, and several people who previously voted against the FAR Act switched sides. It'd end up passing overwhelmingly successfully in a vote of 32-2, in a major victory, and it was implemented into the constitution in the summer of 267, in the beginning of election season.

After it became clear to him that he needed to do his campaigning in places outside of elections; in early 262 David released "The Idea of a Glorious Red Dawn: The Path to the Ideal Socialist State" as an open letter to the Communist Party detailing his own personal Socialist school of thought which he has personally named the "Xeroisidé-Valleidé" school of thought.

During the voting for the FAR Act; David stated his support for Magerius' proposition to abolish term limits and, following a lengthy debate over it between several citizens, proposed a compromise which would include the introduction of a 1-term limit to the Deputy Secretary in exchange. As this compromise was not accepted by Magerius, upon the introduction of the proposal to the National vote David joined the opposition led by Vyacheslav Von Kessel.

Member of the Central Committee of the CPUSSE (265 T.E-Present)
In early 265 he announced his candidacy in the elections for the Central Committee, using his acronym "DVKS" to name his campaign. He promised dedication to the launching of new economic reforms under Commissioner of Industry Rosa Ortangon, to work to establish a party newspaper separate of the Red Star, to lead a new era of cultural prosperity, and to work with all, even those who disagreed with him. He also stated specifically that he was not a moderate or big-tent candidate, instead pointing out his devout constitutionalism, support for the people as the supreme rulers of the state, with the only moderate of his policies being his position on the issue of Unitarianism vs Federalism. His other two family members; Vyacheslav and his father Pakartov, also ran in the election as the only really experienced candidates besides Ren Serebra, Jus Ukumari, and Karzen Dmitri Argead with the other 7 candidates in the election being relatively new politicians. The main reason behind this is, funnily enough, that some members of the previous Central Committee straight up forgot to run in the election.

The Central Committee elections of 265 proved incredibly influential as they saw the New Generation, the Von Kessels included, win in a landslide. David won 13 votes, or 10%, putting him in the top 4 candidates with the others being; Vyacheslav with 14 votes (11%), Karzen Dmitri Argead with 15 votes (12%), and Pakartov with 17 votes (13%). The victorious candidates behind David were Nivon Note Ukumari with 11 votes (9%), Diakyta Vauper with a similar result, and Ded Vét with 10 votes (8%), all of which were newcomers when it comes to the political scene.

Ahead of the election season for 269; ComJus Rakin Garxo announced her intentions to run, but did not submit for the electoral commission due to being unable to find a running mate. As a supporter of Garxo, David offered to be her running mate in the case she did not find any other option, doing so mostly jokingly as he did not expect the situation to be that desperate. But in the end it turned out that he was wrong, and he was announced as Garxo's running mate mostly without any previous discussion.

Barely with any campaigning, the Garxo-DVKS ticket was able to win 2nd place in the elections, although still being over 20 votes behind the victorious. Upon the announcements of the results David announced his intentions to retire sometime within the next 6 years as he began focusing more on his family life following his marriage to Adiega Van Sarot sometime in the 260s. But alongside this announcement he declared his intention to push the Central Committee to work harder in the time left for its term, as he wanted to go out in glory.

Around early 275 David began questioning whether or not he truly wishes to retire due to his realization that he, even with his decreased activity, is still one of the more active and dedicated-to-change politicians in Government, especially under the more moderate rule of Magerius Ukumari. He and Vauper became the most if not only active members of the Central Committee by 270, although his Father Pakartov returned to activity upon his election to the Partisan Chair. Meanwhile David had previously abandoned any hopes of running for the SPA and left it up to Vyacheslav, but after his loss in the General Secretary elections he became more inactive in the public life. And after speaking a bit with his Uncle Æthelfrith, he decided that he will run for re-election in the Central Committee, and possibly in the elections for the SPA. All this culminated in him announcing his re-election campaign in Spring of 277, being the only one other than Vauper of the incumbent Central Committee to have declared their campaign by that point. In his application he promised to work on consensus-based decision making, noting himself as one of the active members of the CC. Alongside this he promised to establish a Working Group related to Council & Marketplace Activity, to work for change while also focusing on clearing the party line of any inefficiencies, and to do his best to assist in empowering the Autonomous states but he specifically stated it will not be one of his main focuses. He'd end up winning re-election as the third candidate with the most votes, behind Ren Serebra and Diakyta Vauper. Upon his victory he announced his intentions to fulfill his promise on the Working Group as soon as possible, although he was told to wait until the Central Committee was fully inaugurated.

In the General Secretary elections of 281 David was one of several progressive CPUSSE members to have endorsed Ren Serebra in her run for re-election alongside Vauper and Premier Aba Tzain, both of which belonging to the Libertarian wing of the party. Once Serebra ended up in only 2nd place, David expressed his opposition to the results although praised the election for being interesting and truly democratic in his eyes.

Establishing the Party Press (267-275 TE)
Upon the inauguration of the Central Committee, David immediately set his sights on working to establish a Party Paper off of the framework given by Xeroise Ronango'O's proposed "Vanguard Bulletin". Although initially supporting for it to be separate of The Red Star; after some convincing from his peers he changed his position to support the Vanguard Bulletin to just become a part of The Red Star, a position more friendly to the ComInfo. By the Summer of 267, David was able to call a vote in the Central Committee to finalize its decisions on establishing the Vanguard Bulletin. In the end the Central Committee decided to make the Vanguard Bulletin just a special section of The Red Star, and David instead supported Ded Vét to be its chief editor. In the beginning of Autumn, the Central Committee and Partisan Chair unanimously had voted in favour of everything that was agreed upon, and the Vanguard Bulletin was established. In Autumn of 273 he proposed a party line on " Separation of Press Authority "; which sought to make the party officially recognize the Red Star and Vanguard Bulletin as separate entities, the former being Independent and the latter being for the party, and to assure that they'll be kept as such. His proposal quickly garnered the support of a majority in the Central Committee, and then in the party upon its proposition to the membership. Immediately after the passing of the party line, David worked alongside Vauper to author a party line on plagiarism, specifically in election applications. The process took a while as Vauper was at the same time still writing their Xeroist-Matriarchist manifesto, but by summer of 275 the party line was introduced to the vote. " The Party on Plagiarism " gave party members the right to accuse another of plagiarism and call for intervention from the Central Committee, which would be able to punish them by voiding their application or alongside this, in more serious situations, to outright ban them from running in that specific election.

Work on Economic Reforms (278 TE-Present)
In late 278, David finally was able to form the Working Group on Council & Marketplace Activity. In his announcement he also expanded that the idea was to make them more influential and efficienct in the economy. David's will to put the party to work on this issue had to do with the fact that he's also a very ardent supporter of Unions and a strong system of workplace democracy.

Within the Working Group there was alot of agreement between the members: who sought to establish People's Markets as separate entities than the Emporium in order to slightly decentralize the economy, grow activity of marketplaces & the councils, and to assist the economies of the Autonomous States. The first point of conflict the Group came across was on the issue of whether or not to include profit taxes in the reforms. Some such as Vauper outright opposed the taxes, while some such as Ded Vet and PSB Officer Michael favoured them. Rosa Ortangon, who was by then in retirement, even momentarily joined the Group to voice her opposition to the taxes. Initially a vocal supporter of the taxes; David declared his neutrality and instead called a vote in the group with Michael immediately voicing his agreement.

Although David was dedicated to the reform of the Council's at first: former Chair Ortangon voiced her opposition to any sort of reform related to them, calling them useless bureaucracy and stating their failures. She was joined by Chair von Kessel and Docteure Serebra, and thus David caved in and retracted his support for the Councils. In turn, when he began working on the " Revised Unitarian Line " (RUL) he agreed to making the Party's opposition to Councils official and his economic ideology became increasingly centralist.

Political Reforms (280 TE-Present)
In early 280 David proposed the " Fair Party (Line) in the USSE " to be voted upon by the Party Membership. After his peer Docteure joked of introducing a Party Line on allowing to personally hand over your party position; David was inspired to introduce a line to make it more difficult to make it easier to abuse your power in the party. The FP(L)U proposed to introduce a new, slightly more difficult process for changing the powers of the Party Leadership: If proposed by either the Central Committee or the Partisan Chair, then a reform deemed relevant will have to meet the unanimous support of all six people before going to a vote in the party line where it will need a minimum of 20 votes in order to pass. Meanwhile if it was proposed by the membership then it'd go through an even more rigorous process that'd require it to be proposed first in the Member Proposals channel, meet a requirement of 10 votes minimum, and then go through the same process as with the Leadership.

Having voiced concerns over the outdatedness of the Unitarianism vs Federalism Line, David was able to convince Chair Pakartov von Kessel to work with him on a " Revised Unitarian Line " (RUL), to also fix the writing of the previous line and to ensure it's slightly less draconian. The new line would bring an official line for the opposition of the creation of other political parties and organisations in the USSE, opposition to the continuation of Worker's Councils, and opposition to the officialisation of Factionalism. Most of the Line was written by Pakartov with only assistance from David, but David wrote the section stating "The USSE has subject nations which for the most follow the principles of Xeroism and who follow Unitarianism, the CPUSSE shall encourage the precept of Unitarianism in our country but as United through Xeroism, the Autonomous States and their sovereignty will be protected by the party. And thus any efforts to forcefully dissolve the Autonomous Stares will be opposed." as a supporter of the Autonomous States. In the end, due the line only passing in a 3-2 vote, it was given up to Rosa Ortangon to change the writing to reach compromise.

Supreme People's Representative (283 TE-Present)
In early 283 David announced his campaign for the Supreme People's Assembly. In his announcement he listed out several promises for his hopefully elected term: To continue his efforts in Constitutional Reforms, to serve as a reformist but compromising candidate, to implement more economic reforms including those related to Councils and Cooperatives, to attempt to diplomatically and economically unify Serrona, to defend and support the Autonomous States, and to be an active legislator. Upon the announcement of his campaign he also endorsed incumbent Premier & Representative Abba Tzain. After more candidates joined the race David saw it fit to expand on his promises, not viewing himself as the most popular candidate, and spoke directly to the people in a speech declaring his vehemntly Anti-Bigotry stance, his wishes to put the SPA on equal footing with the Executive Government, to organise and catalogue all legislation passed by the Legislative, that he'll continue to support Unitarianism in the USSE alongside his support for empowering the Autonomous states, and that, even with his following of Socialism in One Country, he will support Internationalist efforts so long as they are viable.

In 284 he would win the election as Seat VIII of the Fourth Supreme People's Assembly, which immediately got to work on trying to call an early vote for the Premier. Initially reluctant, being more in favour of a normal procedure, David in the end voted in favour of the proposition, which passed later. The election for Premier was between Seat I Arika Ronango'O, a close ally of David's in the Commission of Culture, Seat III Docteure Serebra, one of David's closest allies as a whole, Seat V J.U. Wntryiheimer, David's step-brother, Seat VII Leon Zopasku, and Seat X Jorah Necrothar. Although initially conflicted between a vote for Docteure and for Arika, as the votes were made public David understood Doc had no chances of winning and in the end voted for Arika, who ended up becoming the Third Premier of the Supreme People's Assembly.

Supported Legislation (284 TE-Present)
Upon his election he immediately began working on legislation, alongside Seat VII Leon Zopasku, which seeks to ensure Artists in the Commission of Culture are able to be given fair wages. A very personal issue for David, one of the few active scholars in the USSE in his time, which culminated in the creation of the " Artistic Compensation Budget ".

The ACB proposed to establish the "Committee of Artistic Wages" to consist of the General Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, the Commissioners of Culture and Information, and three other assistants who were to be appointed by all except the Deputy. All three appointers would have the ability to veto each other's candidates to ensure the Committee appoints and makes decisions based on unanimity and unbias. The Committee would have access to the State Treasury to give artists many kinds of awards. Although initially popular, the bill ended up being vetoed by the General Secretary who did not believe his position would make sense to be included in this. After the veto, David and Leon proposed a new version which excluded the General Secretary and gave the Deputy the right to veto the Committee's decisions, but once this was proposed it met opposition from Representatives Fae Brenrose and Arika Ronango'O, who complained about the Committee Assistants and the amount of money the awards were made up of. And following a round of negotiations with Arika, David wrote up the third and final version of the ACB named the " Revised Artistic Compensation Budget "; replacing the Deputy Secretary with the head of the state bank, and greatly reducing the amount of money the Committee could reward. Unlike the previous two versions, the final one was proposed by David himself. It passed with nine votes in favour and two abstentions.

Political Ideology
Main article: Xeroism

Xeroism
According to some Lausán political experts: David's alignment in the Party can be debatable, but most believe that he belongs in the Classical Xeroist faction of the party, although his ideology combines many aspects of different Socialist ideologies from across the world and with him oftenly coalitioning with the Left Opposition, he remains a relatively Orthodox Xeroist.

He is an advocate for the Dictatorship of the Masses, Workplace Democracy and Trade Unionism, a Government mixing Autonomism and Unitarianism, and Democratic Centralism, seeing multi-party politics as useless when discourse can be had inside a single massive party. This view is contrasted by his support for the Unitist Socialist principle of "Conditional Electoralism", viewing violent revolution as a last resort and believing the path to revolution always depends on the circumstances of a nation. As a politician he seeks to actively consult with the people in order to bring about further reforms to the state and is staunchly opposed to autocracy and authoritarianism, while recognizing even his peers may follow these "terrible" ideologies. Consequently, he is a devoted Constitutionalist with the greatest example of this aspect of his ideology being his FAR Act.

He wrote that he also rejects interclassism and instead views the world in the form of two entities: the National Country (Dé’i Toxédélé Toxédé), representing the people, and the Political Country (Dé’i Fauto Toxédé), representing the oligarchical elites. And says that "It is the mission of the national country to overthrow the political country in order to create a genuine humanist democracy, united as one by nationality."

Initially supportive of an actively interventionist yet cooperative foreign policy, as time passed David has come to support instead the Socialism in One Country philosophy. Meaning that he now opposes any active intervention by the USSE, at least officially, with international Socialist movements and calling for a focus on cooperation with foreign powers no matter their ideology, believing that as long as they do not actively undermine the revolution then they can still be seen as allies. At the same time he has developed into a Lausán, and in addition a Serronan, Nationalist with hopes of one day seeing Serrona unified under the USSE.

Max Gadidé (Cultural Patriotism)
Venkesel, as a member of the Commission of Culture, is an outspoken advocate for cultural/historical conservation. Seeing the keeping of history as the most vital thing and denouncing the lack of available information about previous General Secretaries and influential figures of the USSE. Because of this, he decided to become the biographer of General Secretaries Magerius Ukumari, being so for all his last three terms and until his death, and Rosa Ortangon in hopes of beginning a trend in the Commission of Culture's wiki team to further write down the history of the nation.

Part of his school of thought is the idea of "Cultural Patriotism" can be seen as reminiscent of the Tulipanist ideology's belief that the promotion of art and anything related to the cultures of Eldham will lead to international prosperity. Believing that art can serve to unify the many peoples of the world, and that learning to accept each other's cultures can bring a golden age of prosperity, at least to Eldham. He is a major advocate for the growth of the Lo'Oi language as part of his ideology, naming many of the important aspects of it in Lo'Oi, even taking several private lessons to learn the language and legally changing his surname to "Venkesel".

David's belief in Max Gadidé is prominent in his image as a politician as it's made him also one of the main voices for the struggling artists of the USSE. This can most be seen with how his first legislation as a Representative in the Supreme People's Assembly was to reform the way Artists receive payment, and also how much.