2017-18 United Provinces Crisis

The 2017-18 United Provinces Political Crisis is a major, currently ongoing political crisis ongoing in the United Provinces. During the crisis, two parliamentary elections were held and several coalitions were both made and broken.

It began with a conflict between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, in a coalition at the time, over the budget, immigration and healthcare. This conflict had already been ongoing since March and had been regularly covered by the media. Turmoil heated up in June as Robert Smith, leader of the Conservative Party, finally snapped and stated that "we're not going to tolerate President McClark's and Prime Minister Sanders' inaction and constant delays on votes any longer" and threatened to cut the coalition within 48 hours.

Sanders and McClark quickly tried to drag Smith out of doing this, to no avail - Conservatives cut the coalition with the Liberals at midnight and the government was in turmoil. A few days later, Lena Sanders announced an election in a bid to restore stability in the country, let the voters choose their future and possibly win a majority for her party - this move turned out to be a disaster and the government was put in more turmoil than ever before.

Barely 2 months later the two parties have agreed to amend the Constitution so the Parliament is bicameral. Another election was to be held in October - this attempt also failed and Liberals barely were the largest party.

McClark already had low approval ratings and his presidency was considered quite unsuccessful by many Snowinns. His attempts to curb down nationalism after Robert Smith was disposed had seemingly hit back as nationalism was once again on the rise. The right wing, along with the far-left, started demanding a referendum to change the flag back to the blue-white-green flag and to restore "Snowiny" in the official name of the country.

McClark had campaigned for the most reasonable option possible, though he supported a blue-white-orange flag as it was at the time and the name United Provinces, without "of Snowiny". He had completely failed - the blue-white-green flag was voted for in a landslide of 92% and the United Provinces of Snowiny name with a 69% landslide.