Yaraan Act, 1904

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Yaraan Act, 1904
Long title An Act to Restore the Rights and Autonomy of Yaraa; And to Protect Yaraan Rights in the Kingdom
Acronyms YA 1904
Enacted by 31st Kryfonsparliszaiye, on 27 January, 1904
Effective 1 June, 1904, with some provisions coming into effect on 1 January, 1905
Voting history
First vote Passed 46–35 (1/27/04)
Legislative history
Proposed on 5 October, 1903
  • First draft: 22 November, 1903
  • Second draft: 4 December, 1903
  • Final draft: 29 December, 1903
  • Proposed as law: 14 January, 1904
  • Vote, passed: 27 January, 1904
Major amendments
Tuszkean Act, 1927
  • Established minority protections under the law and in the Kryfonsparliszaiye; made it unlawful to discriminate against Yaraans and Tuszkeans in hiring and education

Kryfona General Rights Act, 1930

  • Made it unlawful for discrimination to occur in any place or profession; established desegregation; reinforced the secession rights of Yaraa and Tuszke; granted inalienable voting rights to Yaraans and Tuszkeans; established the Reintegration Committee

Yaraan Act, 1968

  • Strengthened Yaraan protections under law; abolished anti-Yaraan gerrymandering districts

The Yaraan Act, 1904 is the second of the three Yaraan Acts, and a landmark piece of civil rights and sovereignty legislation which prevents the discrimination of Yaraans in voting and in standing for political office, and confers back to the Province of Yaraa many of the autonomy rights it had been granted as the Yaraan Autonomous Province. Despite Royalist opposition to the Act and its contents, and in spite of their control of the Kryfonsparliszaiye at the time by way of a patkoaliza, the Kryfonsparliszaiye voted on 27 January, 1904 to pass the Act, doing so by a vote of 46–35. Efforts to lobby the King to reject the Act by Royalists after the vote gained traction (the Loyalists would not have had enough votes to overturn the King had he vetoed the Act) but ultimately failed. The Act saw no opposition from King Xeriren Awaseq, and officially went into enforcement on 1 June, 1904. Although the Yaraan Political Revolution was already underway by the time the Act passed, it is nonetheless widely considered to mark the point at which Yaraans began to actively fight back against their oppressors, rather than waiting for the crown to do so for them.

The Yaraan Act, 1904 is split into two parts, one of which protects Yaraan and Tuszkean voting rights and allows them to stand for office legally, and the other of which reinstates the autonomous powers of the Yaraan province. Part One contains three significant provisions relating to voting which make it unlawful to restrict any candidate from standing for a federal, provincial, or local office on the sole basis of their race, species, or nationality. Provision One abolished the hitherto extant Vizsak laws, which had prohibited full-blooded Yaraans and Tuszkeans from holding office except where approved or appointed on behalf of the crown; Provision Two struck down the 1817 Prevention of Incompetent Votership Act, which had acted to disenfranchise most Yaraan voters, both within the Kryfonsparliszaiye and at the provincial and local levels by requiring them to pass a competence test. Provision Three establishes the legality of full-blooded Yaraans and Tuszkeans holding office, and the legality of Yaraans and Tuszkeans voting; it outlines further the punishment for illegal suppression or discrimination against such voters by any means, and recognized such acts as hate crimes under the law. Part Two contains a single provision, which restores to Yaraa Province "the conditional right to secession from the Kryfona Kingdom; the right to establish its own legislature and rules regarding such legislature; the right to self-government free of the Kingdom and of the Crown; the right to establish its own services independent of the Kingdom and of the crown, with the provision that such services do not infringe on or violate Kryfona federal law; and the right to establish and enumerate its own Constitution," with a reservation of further provisions to be considered later.

The Yaraan Act, 1904 was first conceptualized in January of 1903 as simply a Yaraan restoration act; it was the child of Ilin Tävie, a part-Tuszkean who was a Loyalist MP in Reriskzeiy at the time. Tävie cared relatively little for the voting rights situation of Yaraans and Tuszkeans (himself obviously being unaffected by the matter) and was much more concerned with the restoration of autonomy rights to the Yaraans having considered their punishment to have gone on for long enough. However, another proposal which had been done several months earlier by fellow Loyalist Nazrye Kelem Svariyantina which sought to address that matter was brought up when Tävie's proposal was made, and the two ideas were subsequently combined into what became the text of the Act, to Tävie's mild displeasure. Nonetheless, the combined proposal went forward, and several months later on 3 October, 1903, KP-29-1-04 "Yaraan Act (for Rights and Restoration), 1904" was officially proposed to the Kryfonsparliszaiye. The bill met stern resistance in the drafting stage from Royalists, who effectively blocked the proposal from going forward with a number of amendments to be considered to the bill that were extensive; however, these amendments all failed in a precursor to the actual vote when the four patkoalizasi loyalists voted with their party, and the proposal eventually proceeded into the drafting stage in late November.

It took a little over a month for the bill to clear the drafting committees, mostly because of Royalist stonewalling on the matter. Loyalist support on continuing the bill wavered slightly during this period, but at no point were they below 41 votes. The final draft was completed on 29 December, and on 14 January, 1904, the bill was officially proposed for vote on the Kryfonsparliszaiye floor and scheduled for a vote on 27 January, 1904. Nonetheless, Royalists still believed they had a chance to block the bill, and assumed the four patkoalizasi Loyalists would vote against the bill when it came up. This assumption proved incorrect, and on 27 January, all 35 Loyalists plus the 7 YKM MPs of the Kryfonsparliszaiye voted in favor of the bill; four Royalists in seats with significant Yaraan populations also voted for the bill, for a final vote of 46–35.

Royalists, not content with the outcome of the vote, immediately after its conclusion began to pressure King Xeriren Awaseq to either veto or fail to ratify the bill, which would effectively kill it as the Loyalists and YKM did not have the combined votes to overturn such an occurrence. Awaseq resisted this pressure; six hours after its passing in the Kryfonsparliszaiye, Awaseq ratified the bill, making it the law of the land. No further action to prevent the bill's passage occurred, and legal challenges were floated internally within the Royalist Party but ultimately failed to materialize.