Geopolitical Simulator gameplay: Belarus

I've tried several combinations of nations to start with and learn the game and it seems so far that the easiest to begin the game with is Belarus, the former Soviet republic. In case you weren't aware of how Belarus is in real life, you should take a look at the Wikipedia article on Belarussian politics. The presidency is dominated by the demagogic figure Alexander Lukashenko, who, during his presidency, has become quite controversial with the outside world. The parliament, while democratically elected, is more or less in-step with President Lukashenko's policies and political will. In real life, more than three-quarters of the national parliament is obedient to Lukashenko, and this includes the once all-powerful Communist Party of Belarus.

I figured this would be a good place to start. I have a cooperative parliament with my "boys" in charge there, and in gameplay, this assumption turned out to be correct and true to real life.

I started play making my own President character, who is a member of the ruling Communist Organization. I didn't like that name, so I used to editor to change the name from "Communist Organization" to "Communist Party of Belarus" with the initials KPB (the word Communist in Russian and Belarussian starts with a "K", not a "C").

My party, the KPB, started with 70% of the seats in Parliament, with another communistic political party aligned with my KPB added about another 10%, making my parliamentary power roughly 80% of the votes... a virtual dictatorship.

My first task was the get the economy back in order. My economy was essentially slumming it with massive budget deficits and not as much tax and trade revenue as I would have liked. So I lowered interest rates by 1.00% and immediately I saw some results. My popularity went up by 10 points and the economy started to pick up and generate more tax revenues.

I also went on to cut the "fluff" out of the national budget - all those extras that aren't essential to keeping my people happy with me and voting for me and my boys. So I cut anything in the budget having to do with handicapped stuff (I know, pretty bad, but it's just a game). At this point, anything I want to do has to pass through the OK of parliament, which was usually easy since normally 70% of the 80% went along with whatever I wanted to do.

As my popularity climbed, I could cut taxes for the middle class, raise taxes on pornography, and even got the OK from parliament to alter the consitution to make refences to an official religion, Russian Orthodox Christianity. Sure, the Catholics and the Protestents weren't too happy, but whatever. My popularity was hovering in at around 75+%.

Now was the time to get rid of the parliament entirely. Well, not entirely - but only relegate them to the status of strictly a deliberative assembly with only advisory powers. I successfully stripped them of their legislative authority and their ability to hold me in check.

This lessened my popularity by about 10 or so points and there were some protests, but no big deal. Once I issued a few decrees to give folks more social security and tax credits, those protests quickly died down and my popularity rose again.

Next, I was able to pass a law altering the constitution to make me President For Life, a virtual king. Again, some people complained, but you can always line their pockets with money and they'll keep quiet. If not, you always have your Secret Service to "silence" individual members of the opposition and bribe organizations.

Yes, Belarus is indeed a good place to start to learn Geopolitical Simulator.