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	EQUALITY PARTY

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The Equality Party was a party strongly devoted to egalitarianism. It defined egalitarianism as "the struggle to overcome all imbalances". The party's focus was primarily on fighting ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious inequality, although some members of the party saw fighting economic inquality to be of equal importance. The Equality Party was formed out of one wing of the historic Liberal Party, and eventually merged into the Democracy Party. After the Democracy Party collapsed, many former supporters of the Equality Party ended up in the modern Balance Party, which was formed out of the Democracy Party's core.

Colour and Emblem

The official colour of the Equality Party was a sort of pale orange or peach. The party's official symbol consisted of five parallel lines, all of equal length. The emblem was intended to represent uniformity, and thus equality.

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The party's official name in Lendian was "lo Partido Equalitarianisto", meaning either either "Equality Party" or "Egalitarian Party" depending on how one chooses to translate it. Often, however, the party omitted the first part of its name, and simply called itself "Equalitaria", just meaning "Equality".

Quote

"All people are born equal, and are all of equal potential, but society nevertheless persists in dividing people into groups and setting one above the other. It is the duty of everyone to resist this, and we must fight to abolish both privilege and deprivation alike."

History of the Party

The Equality Party had its origins in the Liberal Party, which was once the country's largest political party after the Imperials. The Liberal Party was based around policies of both social and economic freedom, believing that everyone should be free to fulfill their own potential without being held back. There was, however, division within the Liberal Party, with two factions (generally known as "right liberals" and "left liberals") emerging. The right liberals focused primarily on economic liberty, saying that the principle means by which people were oppressed was by the government attempting to control people's financial affairs. The left liberals, by contrast, believed that social oppression was the principle problem, with people being marginalised on the basis of their race, gender, religion, language, and other such factors. The left liberals were generally dismissive of economic liberty, saying that mere matters of money were not nearly as important as social liberty.

In the early 280s, the Liberal Party began to show signs of deterioration, with right liberals and left liberals openly criticising each other in public. The Liberal Party's vote collapsed, and each side blamed the other for the decline. By 286 AP, the Liberal Party was a shell of its former self, holding only nine seats in the Imperial Council (as compared to fifty seats at its height). In 288 AP, the party finally splintered, with the five left liberal Councillors breaking away to form a new party. This group became the Equality Party. The remaining four Councillors, all right liberal, continued under the Liberal banner, but all lost their seats in the 289 AP elections. Some of them would later go on to found the Capitalist Party.

The Equality Party did not manage to recapture the support held by the former Liberal Party, but nevertheless proved itself to be a viable entity. In the 289 AP elections, the party retained all its seats, and in the 292 AP elections, it gained one more. In 295 AP, however, the Equality Party was overshadowed by the new Democracy Party, established by twenty-eight reformist members of the Imperial Party. The Equality Party held many views in common with the Democracy Party, particularly a belief in the need to reform the country's democratic systems. After extensive negotiations, it was agreed that the Equality Party's six Councillors would work under the Democracy Party's banner during the program of reform.

The reform was successful, but before any plans were made to reestablish the Equality Party's independence, the leader of the Democracy Party was assassinated. The Democracy Party immediately began to splinter. The Equality Party, which still retained its organisational structure, was much more cohesive than the other loose factions within the Democracy Party, and found itself with considerable influence. Eventually, the Equality Party formed an alliance with Aranezo Galazo, a leading moderate in the Democracy Party. Together, Galazo's faction and the Equality Party set out to forge a new group. This group eventually bevcame the modern Balance Party, which incorporates many beliefs and values of the old Equality Party.

List of Leaders

• Julia Sentira (288 - 295)