Who is Petra Novak?

The nationalist party’s new PM candidate for the 2080 elections is a woman named Petra Novak. She was born a Croat in 2035 from Europe. As an adolescent she lacked the christian faith that many of her comrades had, so she felt disconnected from society. It was when she was 17 she discovered she was a lesbian. This was not great for her, because her country was very religious and conservative.

She hid that fact about her, but she could only do that for so long. When she was 22, word later got out about her discovery and she was persecuted, ran out of her village. She was only able to find refuge with one of her male and secretly socialist friends from school who at that point was living in Vienna. Living together, it didn’t take them long to become best friends.

Her best friend came across a community of people who partially overlapped with his socialist community called Esperantistoj, or Esperanto speakers. He was intrigued by Esperanto’s concept, and absorbed the language quickly. He taught his friend and soon Novak was speaking Esperanto as well as her best friend.

With her best friend, they were able to visit Bialystok in 2066, a hub for Esperantistoj, whose language was invented nearly 2 centuries before. At this time Ĉeftero was still a young settlement, but it was one looking for growth. It was founded 4 years previously, and some settlers had left the city to spread the news about the world’s first Esperanto speaking city in antarctica. 

All were intrigued, but very few actually cared enough to travel there. The journey of Novak and her friend from Vienna to Bialystok was difficult enough, so the thought of traveling to the tip of Antarctica from literally anywhere sounded straight up silly. She returned with a closer bond to Esperantism, but not necessarily a desire to travel to La Punta. She did, though, keep the settlement’s existence in mind. Soon, it grew into a proper country which was a prominent cultural force globally.

In 2072, her home country of Austria-Hungary suffered a very severe earthquake which saw it collapse. In it, her employer and best friend died. She had nothing left for her there. She encouraged a group of refugees to travel through the Alps and Pyrnees to the Iberian coast to sail all the way to La Punta. She told them about La Punta being among the most welcoming to immigrants in the world and furthermore having a high standard of living.

Upon arrival, She took up residence in the city of Drejkŭo, where many of her Croat-Puntan comrades were also settled. The work she did to get to La Punta was a lot, and she says she did not regret it even slightly. Even with the nation going through a severe recession when she first arrived, she felt much more welcome than she did in her home country. Her experience has only gotten better since. She took a job as an Esperanto Teacher to the refugees from Austria-Hungary and excelled.

When she later saw La Punta hurt by war, she was hurt herself. After the nuclear bombing of Sinjevo, she realized that PM Vjilk’s policy of alliance compliance has not gone well. Meanwhile, the nationalists of the time actively called for war. She cares about the country, but does not think seeking revenge is a reasonable attitude. Her victory definitely pushes the realignment of the Nationalist party’s values, as she describes it.