Difference between revisions of "Beatrice Wake"

Revision as of 01:26, 14 December 2006

Beatrice Wake, a Danaan Member of Parliament for Wintermore, was the original Minister for Justice in the Sacker Government. She was removed from office by a vote of no confidence on 12 November 2006 as a result of the political scandal surrounding Operation Dinah. She is the only Danaan Government minister to ever be removed from office by a vote of no confidence which did not include the entire Government. On 13 November, Aengus Lynch became her successor.

Wake also served as parliamentary leader of the Emancipation Party before it merged with several other parties of the constitutional left to form the Progressive Democratic Party. Wake is the most outspoken feminist in the Resurgent Dream and possibly in the entire Commonwealth of Peoples. She attracted substantial attention when she did a joint speaking tour on women's issues with Pantocratoria's Princess Irene, former leader of the Pantocratoria First Party and an outspoken social conservative.

Background and family

Youth and education

Beatrice Wake was born in Naoley to Samuel and Henrietta Wake. Both parents had been born in the Resurgent Dream but traced their ancestry back to England. Beatrice was the second of two children. Her older brother is Lieutenant George Wake.

Beatrice attended university at the University of Civic Duty, earning a Bachelors in political science and then a Juris Doctor degree. The Danaan Civil War occurred during her second year at the university and Beatrice was one of many student activists arrested for protesting the racialist policies of the insurgents during the time they held Tarana.

Domestic life

Wake is an out of the closet lesbian and has been ever since university. She currently lives alone. Until the formation of the Progressive Democratic Party and the correspondent dissuolution of the Emancipation Party as an independent organization, Wake was in a long-term partnership with Katy Anthony. However, Wake and Anthony separated over political differences when Anthony, a fellow MP, refused to join the new Progressive Democratic Party and instead went on to found the Danaan Women's Party.

Legal career

Wake became an assistant district attorney for Warren Parish shortly after graduating from law school. She earned a reputation for her rigorous prosecution of domestic abuse, child neglect and child abandonment cases. She campaigned for District Attorney as an advocate for women and children and was elected in 1995. Wake was generally perceived to be true to her campaign promises by both supporters and detractors. She focused an unconventionall large portion of the resources of the District Attorney's Office on the prosecution of domestic violence and child neglect and abandonment cases.

Early political career

Wake was selected by the Danaan Modernist Party as a candidate for Parliament in the 2000 elections. She was a Modernist backbencher during Vincenzo Lacau's second term as Prime Minister.

After the Shattering, Wake and fellow Modernist MP Katy Anthony, with whom she also had a personal relationship, were worried that the interests of Danaan women might be adversely affected by a post-Shattering political climate which featured, among other things, the emergence of conventional social conservatism as a significant movement in the Resurgent Dream. Seeking to defend the rights of Danaan women, Wake and Anthony formed the Emancipation Party as an explicitly feminist political party.

Career

Karamanlis Government

During the National Unity Government (more accurately described as an exceptionally broad coalition) of Minerva Karamanlis, Wake led the Emancipation Party to vote with the Government on questions of confidence even though she was not offerred a seat in the Cabinet. At the time, the Emancipation Party was negligible in size and Karamanlis was already pressed to negotiate a Cabinet with the leaders of the two other major parties in government. While Wake was paid the courtesy of informal consultations with the leading members of the Cabinet on all major questions and was able to secure a tougher government line on domestic abuse and mild liberalization on abortion and divorce law, she had no major influence on policy during this period.

Scott Government

During the Progressive Coalition Government of Adair Scott, the Emancipation Party was one of five parties in the Cabinet. The party's leading members were appointed to a number of ministries. Wake herself became the Minister for Justice. During the Scott Government, she used her position to increase investigation and prosecution of human trafficking, increase cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies and pressure local district attorneys to devote more serious effort to prosecuting domestic abuse and marital rape cases.

Wake was able to influence the policy of the Scott Government substantially more than she had been able to influence the Karamanlis Government's policies. Largely through her influence, the government passed important anti-discrimination legislation to secure women's position in the workplace, legislation guaranteeing a positive right to maternity leave and pressuring employers to make reasonable accomodations for other family obligations and decriminalized all sexual acts between consenting adults which had previously been criminal offenses.