Salad Land (finally) has a leader

After months of delays due to court battles, and the refusal of the incumbent Prime Minister to vacate his seat (or his house), Salad Land has finally declared its elections concluded with the winner of the elections taking office today.

Valeré Patenaude, the former Speaker of the Council of Custodians, was officially sworn in today by the country’s monarch, the Marquis Bastien de Salad. “Despite the best efforts of the sore losers and un-Saladian anarchists who sought to turn our country on its head, the voice of the people has finally prevailed,” Patenaude told the media after the swearing-in ceremony. “Our mission and mandate begin today, to restore Salad Land to its normal and proper place in the world.”

Patenaude ran as the candidate of the Unlimited Salad Party, the major political party in the country which is aligned with the Marquis. The USP managed to fend off a challenge from Leighton Taylor, its former leader who abandoned the party in an insurgent bid to create a Saladian republic. Taylor’s newly formed Toss de Salad Party had the goal of “tossing” the Marquis out of power and aligning the country more closely with the democratic-leaning states of the IDU. While the new party had some unexpected success, it was not enough to topple the USP from the Prime Minister’s spot.

Patenaude will benefit from his party having a majority in the Council of Custodians, as the USP continues its longstanding tradition of dominance there.

Patenaude is expected to reverse course from the direction Salad Land took under Taylor as Prime Minister. During Taylor’s administration, the tiny country took a sharp turn away from its previous neutral position in world affairs. This was most displayed when Taylor slapped sanctions on Xiomera and froze Xiomeran assets in the Saladian banking system in response to Xiomeran actions in Huenya. The actions by Taylor helped trigger a brief Xiomeran occupation of Salad Land. The Saladians ultimately had to agree to a series of Xiomeran demands in exchange for the occupation to end, including ceding one of its islands. Exit polls indicated that many Saladians blamed Taylor for the invasion, a fact that likely cost him his job.

Despite the minor setback of losing his election, Taylor did not go quietly. After the election results were announced last December, Taylor and his new party launched a court fight to overturn them. The case eventually arrived at the Saladian Court of Appeal, the country’s highest judicial body. After deliberating leisurely for a few months, the Court of Appeal finally ruled unanimously in March that Taylor’s challenge was unfounded. The Court ordered Taylor to step down and vacate Zephyr House, the Prime Minister’s residence in Port Salad. Taylor refused to do so, creating a legal crisis and a challenge for the Saladian authorities. After three months of further negotiations, the Salad Land Police Service finally lost its patience and sent in its Special Response Team on June 15th to remove Taylor. The former Prime Minister has since reportedly departed Salad Land for an unknown destination. The SLPS claimed that Taylor “somehow escaped” from their custody, but it is rumored that the police actually let Taylor flee from a possibly vengeful Marquis.

Believe it or not, that actually isn’t the strangest outcome of the Saladian elections. That would be the election of the new mayor of the capital, Port Salad – a parrot named Tlotli. The bird ran as an independent candidate and managed to get 56% of the vote over the incumbent mayor, Olivia Burton. Exit polls from the mayoral election listed reasons from Tlotli supporters as “our current mayor is a birdbrain, might as well elect a bird”, “it might be good for tourism”, and “why not”.