Down with Vader, down with the empire
Daily writing promptEmperor Palpatine has announced open elections for a new Emperor — and he’s nominated Darth Vader. You get to nominate one challenger.
Even against his long career of deception, Sheev Palpatine announcing an open election for the seat of galactic emperor sounds particularly cynical. In response to this farce, I nominate Mon Mothma of Chandrila. However, I do not nominate her to be the next emperor. We do not need a better emperor. We need to altogether dissolve the imperial office and in its place install a constitutional democracy.
Just consider the legacy of Palpatine’s New Order. The emperor had argued that democracy had become “bloated” and “ineffective”, that only a strong hand could bring peace. But under the empire, we have had peace the way a graveyard has its silence. By centralising power, Palpatine has removed the restorative impulses of a free society. There was no legislative body to demand accountability for the Ghorman Massacre, only a Senate that had, as Padmé Amidala lamented, by then been reduced to a “hollowed-out chamber of applause”. The imperial economy has become a brood of parasites fuelled by the sweat and blood of enslaved non-human species and the strip-mining of entire worlds like Ilum.
Vader’s nomination is the zenith of this failure. A Vader-led imperium will be a state of permanent martial law. His fondness for summary execution will ensure immediate compliance as much as guarantee long-term instability. Even now, the empire is a house of cards held together by fear, and the wind of rebellion will inevitably blow it down. We must reject both Palpatine and Vader and instead foster a democratic uprising. It is our moral imperative.
A constitutional democracy is the only system capable of handling a galaxy of 20 million sentient species. In particular, the goal of our uprising must be to install a galactic federation of free worlds, governed by a charter that enshrines the fundamental rights of all these species. Unlike the Old Republic, a new constitutional democracy must separate its powers to prevent any future chancellor from accruing emergency powers indefinitely, the very loophole Palpatine used to dismantle the republic from within.
“The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil,” Mon Mothma noted in her famous denunciation of the emperor. In the same spirit, a new democracy must focus on restoring a free HoloNet, independent of imperial propaganda, to ensure imperial atrocities are laid bare. To avoid the bias in favour of the core worlds that fanned the Separatist crisis, the new democracy should have rotating capitals. By moving the seat of government between worlds, the government will know that it exists foremost at the galaxy’s invitation.
Finally, a constitutional democracy must follow the lead of Princess Leia Organa’s efforts to decentralise the military into planetary defense forces, plus a small, specialised federal fleet tasked with peacekeeping and anti-piracy.
We already have a model for such a government in the actions of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance. Fighters like Bail Organa fought the imperium with X-wings as much as diplomacy, building clandestine cells that worked as small democracies even under the shadow of Star Destroyers. They proved that collective action, with sentient species of all backgrounds working towards a common good, will always trump the will of a Sith Lord, no matter how singular.
By nominating Mon Mothma, I choose the podium over the lightsaber. The open election is obviously a trap but we can turn it into a revolution. Let us rally behind a challenger who represents the restoration of the Senate and the rule of law, and thus force the empire to reveal its true face. If it refuses to honour a democratic result, it will prove it is a common tyranny. If it allows the vote, it will sign its own death warrant.
