User:MJ/sandbox/Lydia Littlejohn
This article is written for an individual set in the 22nd Century
Lydia Littlejohn is the 3rd and current President of the United Earth Commonwealth. Before holding the highest office in the United Earth Government (UEG), her political career had been a varied one. She had government experience from being the US Secretary of State as well as serving as a two-term congresswoman, where she had become one of the youngest Speakers of the House too.
Littlejohn, a tough politician with a strong sense of honour and integrity, became President of the United Earth Commonwealth in 2154. She won a landslide victory against her rivals and was seen as the most open-minded candidate during the election. Her warm, bold and excitable personality made her well-liked by the public. Working with others across the Commonwealth, she established an extremely diverse administration compared to her predecessor. As the first African American woman to be the chief executive of the United Earth Government, Littlejohn was well-known before she announced her candidacy. The United States hadn’t joined the UEG until 2150 and when the elections were to take place in 2154 the former American Ambassador to the UEG had already been campaigning since 2153. Her charming and direct-to-the-point personality had won her the nomination for the Federalist Democratic Party presidential candidate. Following that her campaign continued to show how she and her team were the ones to bring positive change in the Commonwealth, especially since the previous administration had lost the faith of the public due to the Xindi attack. She had wanted to bring not only nations closer together but Earth’s colonies too. Pushing for colonies not to feel isolated had been one of her campaign themes, in fact, her Vice President running mate had been the Prime Minister of Mars.
Biography
Political Life
President of the United Earth Commonwealth
At the end of April 2155, Littlejohn chaired an emergency meeting of her cabinet after the Andorian colony of Docana was invaded by a joint Malurian and Nausicaan task force. In that meeting she made the decision to proceed with Chancellor Margerit's plan to retake the planet with the help from Starfleet Captain Lloyd Burton, even though she faced opposition from members of her cabinet, she agreed to the request from the Andorian leader due to the fact she did not want to see the Coalition of Planets fail so early on in its infancy. She also ordered Fleet Admiral Hathaway to make Burton an 'acting commodore' so he could command the combined forces with the proper authority (again there were some protests from members of Starfleet's admiralty over this decision). After the operation was successfully completed and it was determined that the invaders were privateers hired by the Romulan Star Empire, Littlejohn leaned on her Andorian counterpart to hold back on informing the public about who attacked the Andorian world over concern that the coalition would be led into a war that none of them was prepared for. Her assessment was true as the Vulcans were still dealing with the social and political aftermath from the discovery of the Kir'Shara, the Tellarite government was still rebuilding after losing some of its best ships from the Romulan drone attacks and now the Andorian Imperial Guard had lost a number of its ships and soldiers to liberate Docana. Starfleet was in no place to carry the burden of war. Margerit had initially opposed the suggestion by Littlejohn but relented when Littlejohn insisted that they planned their next moves against the Romulans carefully. After this exchange, both leaders agreed to discuss the situation further when the coalition heads of state and governments met on Babel at the end of the month of May. Littlejohn went on to order her cabinet and military advisors to begin preparations for war against the Romulans.
After the Babel Summit, it was agreed that all four members of the coalition will make a great effort in preparing for war with the Romulans. These efforts included expanding the coalition, one potential new member was the Deltans and Earth had the most in-depth first contact compared to the other members of the coalition. Littlejohn had authorised for a mission to be put together by her Foreign Secretary Madilyn Campbell to send a starship to Delta. Sadly though this mission was not as successful and others were not completed in time when eventually war was declared. Knowing she would become a war-time president, she had presented the joint-signed declaration of war to the United Earth Parliament on July 21st 2155 and four days later after both houses voted unanimously in favour, war was declared against the Romulan Star Empire.
As the war proceeded, Littlejohn had assembled a 'war cabinet' that met daily in London as she had wanted to be involved as the commander-in-chief of Earth's forces. Unfortunately, Earth's allies were struggling to defend themselves against the Romulans as they had created a way to use their telepresence technology to capture ships through their computers. It appeared at the time, due to the lack of technological advancement, Earth ships were less affected by the telepresence capturing device. Nevertheless, this did not stop the Romulans from brutally assaulting Earth ships, the coalition was barely holding the line. When the Romulans destroyed the ECS Raven in October 2155 Littlejohn was forced to make a decision that her advisors felt would hurt her politically, however, her reasoning behind it had nothing to do with politics but what she said was morally right. She addressed the entire commonwealth and informed them that she had issued an executive order that banned all children and non-essential civilians from serving on cargo vessels. Within her order, she had put in place provisions for those children to be evacuated to safe homes if their families could not find suitable residences for their children themselves on a Commonwealth world. Alongside this, she also ensured there was a package that supported those non-essential civilians to have work when they returned home and the order provided relief to the Earth Cargo Service financial aid to support those cargo hauliers that would be greatly affected by the loss of their crews.
By the end of 2155, Littlejohn would lead Earth's forces in one of the bloodiest engagements that the commonwealth would face: the Battle of Sol. On December 29th, the Romulans launched a daring attack against Starfleet in a bid to hit the jewel of the crown, Earth. The president had declared a system-wide state of emergency and had moved all of the Commonwealth’s forces to DEFCON One. At the time when the alarm was raised of the Romulan fleet entering the system, she had been on her way back from having lunch with the British monarch at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Her presidential transport quickly changed its course from heading to London towards Snowdon Mountain Complex instead. The complex, which had one of the Presidential Emergency Operations Centres buried under a huge bunker operated by the Global Defence Force, allowed her to coordinate Earth's response to the invasion force. At the time, the Earth Parliament had passed one of her new bills, the Wars Act. One part of the act included a re-structuring of Earth's militaries, which included the new position of a Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs. At the time the Joint Chiefs only got together to advise the President and the Defence Secretary as well as by members of the war cabinet. Seeing that someone needed to take on this post in an acting position, Littlejohn made quite a controversial decision. Instead of picking from the current joint chiefs, she picked Fleet Admiral Hathaway. Starfleet was not a part of the military formally, it was only a division of the UESPA. Instead, basing her decision on gaining legal advice from her Attorney General, Security Advisor and Foreign Secretary, she federalised Starfleet to become a military branch. As president, she had the power to bring any institute or organisation within the federal government through the use of her executive order powers, but such a decision could only last for fifty Earth days. After that, it either ran out or required it to be agreed upon by both houses of the United Earth Parliament. At the time the only person to protest her decision was Gordon Hurst, the Administrator of the UESPA, who stated that Starfleet was never intended to be a military branch of the Commonwealth. As the two fleets fought around Mars and the outer planets, it appeared that the Romulans would win and as part of a little-minute ditch to change the tide of the battle, Littlejohn authorised the use of the system-wide defence grid. Initially, they had hesitated at using them in fear of Earth ships being hit. Thankfully her decision paid off and greatly assisted the remaining Earth ships in fighting off the Romulan incursion. Several days after the battle had been won for Earth and the clean-up and repair operations had begun, Littlejohn met with a number of Starfleet captains and top brass to make further plans to take the fight back to the Romulans.
Entering 2156, Littlejohn's administration received a huge boost in opinion polls in how they dealt with the aftermath of the Battle of Sol and the recovery operations that swiftly took place afterwards. Unfortunately, though the war was not going in Earth's favour anytime soon. Littlejohn authorised Starfleet to approach the Democratic Union of Kreetassa in opening peace talks to establish trade relationships. However the Romulans had attacked the Kreetassans which resulted in the Starfleet ship Endeavour helping them to recover, this then led to Oliver Campbell opening negotiations to develop an alliance on the insistence of the Kreetassan Chancellor. The alliance with the Kreetassans was seen as a huge victory for Earth and Littlejohn was pleased to sign the alliance treaty after it was approved by Parliament.