Lilja Vestan

Lilja Vestan
Lilja Vestan: the official portrait taken shortly after her appointment to office
38th alráðherra of Helminthasse
In office 1 Conservene 2015 (10 Ekunur 1215 ÁL) – 28 Ediface 2022 (6 Pisasmur 1223 ÁL)
Preceded by	Heiðra Steinn
Succeeded by	Sannhildar Eldhress
Personal details
Born	16 Fabricad 1951 (26 Mjandalur 1151 ÁL) (aged 73) Virkið, Helminthasse

Lilja Vestan (1951- ; 1151- ÁL) was the thirty-eighth alráðherra of Helminthasse, acceding to the position in 2015 as successor to the retiring Heiðra Steinn. A valued associate and confidante of Steinn in office, she was expected by most observers of Helmin politics to follow a good part of Steinn’s agenda, while at the same time seeking to abrade some of the sharper edges which the previous administration was thought to have acquired. For the most part her time in office was without serious controversy, although increased uncertainty in Helminthasse’s political life may have motivated her recent departure from office.

Early life

Vestan was born on 16 Fabricad 1951 (26 Mjandalur 1151 ÁL) in the northern Virkið suburb of Sólarhæð, and was the eldest of three children born to Kara Vestan, a bank manager, and her husband Gísli Drottur. She entered the University of Virkið in 1969, graduating in 1973 with first-class honours in history, where her final-year thesis had been on the subject of the development of the pro- and anti-secession arguments in pre-Summer War Siurskeyti, and the emergence alongside these of the Siblinghood of the Axe. Staying on at UV for postgraduate study, she switched to the law, emerging in the uppermost decile of her class in Estion 1976.

Early career

Vestan took up employment as a junior with the prominent Virkið practice of Lagaselskapur Maríulykill in the autumn of 1976; while she was well-regarded by her employers and was reportedly being considered for more senior management roles, she found commercial law dismaying at times – remarking to friends that “we make use of the law to establish what is right and proper for all, not as a lever to get the results that we want” – and suggested to her superiors that she saw her longer-term career as lying in the public sector. She left Maríulykill on good terms in 1982.

Her new position would lay some of the groundwork for her future career, as she took up a role as general counsel for the ministry of posts and telecommunications. Here she was a significant figure in setting out the legal protocols which would allow the establishment of private television companies in competition with the Helmin state broadcaster, ÚFT, which came into effect from 1984; she also played an important part in deterring the alráðherra, Högni Traustur, from removing ÚFT from state ownership, in line with his government’s general drive towards removing the government from direct ownership of commercial enterprises. In this role she was a valuable source of support for the incumbent minister, Teitur Hönd, a less hawkish conservative who felt it advisable to provide Traustur the sense of restraint that he often lacked, and her association with Hönd as a professional and personal ally would be a significant factor in her later career.

Before the bar

Changes in management at ÚFT prompted Vestan to consider moving more directly into civil law, and she gained certification to practice as an advocate for pleas in 1987. Considering that Virkið was already over-represented in the field, she opted to relocate; gaining an introduction through Hönd to a Lágskáli advocacy practice, she began operations from Helminthasse’s second city at the beginning of 1988. Here she quickly built a firm reputation as a quick and incisive legal mind and as a pugnacious performer in the courtroom; while advocates in Helminthasse are not allowed to actively select their cases – rather, they must accept or refuse what comes to them – she began to be sought out by law firms who were sometimes willing to delay an action until such time as she could take it up. In several instances she also exceptionally acted as counsel in support of cases involving Sarevskur companies and individuals in Siurskeyti, under principles of pro hac vice permitting representation by foreign counsel not otherwise recognised as eligible to practice before the bar in that country.

Although she was widely touted by associates as an excellent prospect for the bench, Vestan was loath to remove herself from the cut and thrust of the courtroom; however, she made the choice to put her name forward after being subjected to a fierce lecture on the matter in 1995 by the veteran Sarevskur judge Pólína Bjarka. Vestan’s own description of the meeting is telling: “Bjarka asked me to attend her in chambers after sentence in one case which I pleaded before her. She congratulated me on the perspicacity of my arguments; then she absolutely tore me to pieces over what she called my ‘gutlessness’ in wasting my ability as a court advocate, when she thought that I should be on the bench alongside her instead of some of the boobs, incompetents and timeservers who were there at the moment. She was a ferocious old witch, and she didn’t need to shred me like that; but I realise now that I was getting a bit complacent, and she shocked me clean out of it. I have to thank her for that.”

Vestan was in due course elevated to the bench in Sarevi in Floridy 1996, and initially acted as reikómari or circuit judge for the eastern Sarevi district, ranged principally in the húðir along the border with Ærlasse. She was reassigned to the city and south-eastern circuit, centred on Lágskáli, late in 1998.

Madam justice

Vestan was appointed to the Court of the Commonhold in Lágskáli in Dominy 2001 following the death of Sten Lyngmóa in a motoring accident near his home in an eastern suburb of the city; then 50 years of age, she was the second-youngest appointment to the court since 1982. Her elevation excited a small amount of heat in legal and political circles, with suggestions that Hönd, then close to the end of his term as althein, was seeking to force the hand of the Hús Laga in Sarevi so as to secure the place of a strong ally as he came home. For that matter, Vestan herself needed to be persuaded to take the seat, with friends commenting that “Lilja insisted that she fought for the law in the streets. She wasn’t a cold-minded theoretician of the kind that was called to the Ædsthirð.” The claim was somewhat disingenuous – Vestan had a significant record of publication in Helmin law journals – but no less heartfelt for all that.

Concerns that Vestan would act at Hönd’s behest proved very much exaggerated, and although she shared many of the thein’s conservative leanings, she displayed unexpected flexibility for a justice at the commonhold level in interpreting the law in as sympathetic a manner as the case allowed. One area where she did establish herself as a clear voice was in pursuance of the rights of individual commonholds as against the central government; Vestan held to a stance that the country was officially the Alliance of Independent Siur Commonholds, and that, while changes in sentiment and political thought had fused them together (much more closely than its founders had envisaged), those commonholds continued to exist and could not be ridden roughshod over by the central government in Virkið. This often put her at odds with her more union-minded fellows; it also created for her one of the sharpest records of her decisions being appealed, although few of those which were passed up to the Ædsthirð fell over on more than minor technical grounds.

Political career

Vestan (at left) and Steinn (second from right) during a state visit by Helwig II of Sergony and his wife Ingrid in 2012.

For all of Vestan’s disclaimers on the question, it seemed that her ability to read both the law and the room in her deliberations was attracting the right notice; local discussion by réttarmenn was beginning to float her as a viable candidate for the next vacancy on the Ædsthirð, before Vestan’s career path was wrenched drastically to one side, with the approach in Empery 2009 which offered her a seat in Helminthasse’s government as attorney-general.

Incumbent alráðherra Grár Dillotur saw Vestan as an acceptable solution to a hard political question. Needing factional support from the more conservative flank of the Landsþing, he now sought to spike their guns with the most independent-minded conservative voice he could find, even if it meant going outside the parliament – not unknown in modern Helmin politics, but rare.

For Vestan, who had never previously shown an interest in a political career, it was a less obvious career move; the separation of law from government since the Endurbygging made the role of attorney-general less significant than its analogues elsewhere in Messenia. Friends have suggested that she was pushed by frustrations from her role on the Sarevi bench and the recent death of her mother, who had relocated to Lágskáli after retirement to live closer to her, creating a sense in her mind that a change in direction would help strengthen her neisti in its search for the All.

Whatever reservations she may have felt about her decision were not apparent from her performance as a minister and her willingness to support Dillotur; she corrected the “anomaly” of her non-elected status in Ediface 2010, replacing Grímur Skarfur, a representative for Bilsbýli in northern Vinhaxa, ostensibly on health grounds – although there was some complaint that she was being fallscreened into the legislature. She remained factionally unaligned for some months before falling in with the moderate conservative Áfram Savan group. Dillotur’s principal concern over her seems to have centered on her willingness to entertain the growing “commonholds’ rights” sentiments in the parliament. She has been claimed as one of the most persuasive voices in steering Dillotur into a resignation on principle in Nollonger 2011 during the scandal of the Grenaröxl affair.

Steinn, succeeding Dillotur controversially, retained Vestan in cabinet but with a new assignment, taking the foreign affairs portfolio; this effectively snubbed the outgoing minister, Lárens Kætt, who had been one of the challengers for the position. Steinn and Vestan quickly built a strong working relationship, with Vestan, now effectively leading Áfram Savan, rendering valuable aid in bringing support behind Steinn in the Landsþing and allowing her to ease out the last vestiges of Dillotur’s faction within cabinet and claim a genuine mandate in her own right. Some political observers saw it as a form of failsafe, claiming that “Steinn thinks that she’s always right; Vestan makes sure that what she actually does is right.”

The summer of 2014 saw a serious diplomatic spat between Helminthasse and Alcasia over the discovery of Helmin-manufactured weapons in an arms cache unearthed during a raid by Alcasian police and military in Darthuizen, close to the Helmin border. The Alcasian authorities, who have long claimed covert support from both Helminthasse and Siurskeyti to Arlaturi militia groups, were outraged; and Steinn’s pugnacious response – reminding Brenasted of past denials of unofficial backing for Sirian groups – while in keeping with her character, was hardly calculated to ease the situation. Vestan, thrown into the middle of the dispute, by all reports succeeded admirably in smoothing ruffled feathers on all sides, authorising an audit of army and manufacturers’ records to try to determine the provenance of the weapons.

Vestan steps forward

The controversy marked the start of a shift away from Steinn in the Eðaldeild; and her very narrow victory against Einar Sparsemi in a vote to retain a seat in that house may have convinced her that the time for her to step aside had now come. Steinn made the decision to resign her office in Nollonger 2015 – a rare instance in Helmin politics of an alráðherra choosing the time and manner of her departure from office – handing back her seals of office on the last day of that month and recommending Vestan as the person best placed within the Landsþing to succeed her. As Vestan had just recently succeeded in renewing her personal mandate to serve in government – a requirement for all Helmin politicians at least once every five years – it seems likely that, having decided to step down, Steinn deliberately waited until this had happened. Vestan formally assumed the office on 1 Conservene, the day following Steinn’s resignation; while she did not make great changes in the cabinet, those which she has made indicated a measured retreat from some of Steinn’s more forceful and more confrontational stances.

The new alráðherra was faced with an early test of her mettle when, in Floridy 2016, the Siurskeyti government announced its intention to drastically increase the prices charged for supplies of natural gas from fields under its control in the Medius Sea, developed under the remit of public-private combines; pipelines from the fields had provided gas to much of Helminthasse since the middle 2000s, as well as extending into western Elland and Tvåriken. The issue was hampered by some rash claims from Siursk media sources – quickly and firmly refuted by Virkið – that Helminthasse had artificially reduced costs to itself in the past by diverting supplies intended for the other countries, in part to make up the cost of resolving issues around its domestic production, mainly in the form of coal gas. Negotiations led by minister for resources Sannhildar Eldhress during late Fabricad and early Estion were successful in moderating the Siursk charges, although these still were subjected to a rise of almost 9% - well above the prevailing rate of inflation in both Siurskeyti and Helminthasse – with likely knock-on adverse effects for Helmin consumers.

While Vestan showed a largely secure touch through much of her early period in office, some of this steady grip seemed to be loosened from 2016, with the loss of a factional partner persuading Vestan to reach out to pro-commonhold elements, notably the Vaki group which had been the most prominent of these in the Landsþing.

This sense of loss of the agenda would continue. The severe damage caused in Lágskáli by the intense winds and floods of the Stórmyrkur incident in Floridy 2018 caused disruptions in both the Sarevi viðaldsdeild and central government, with painful comparisons to the similar disruption of the 1965 Straumsfall incident. Allegations of mismanagement and paralysis over assistance to the victims surged through both, with an angry exchange between Vestan and the thein of Sarevi, Alvara Hönd (the daughter of her old mentor and a long-time friend) – being pressed at home by anger over the centre’s “neglect” of Sarevi – being luridly publicised across the country.

Burning issues

The argument in the north was perhaps symptomatic of greater changes at work within the Landsþing. Vaki had espoused a push for more subsidiarity, with greater equity between the central government and the five commonholds – but this line was being hardened and deepened, beginning to fuse with the wider Brennandi movement into a position in which the commonholds would largely supplant the government, with a much weaker Landsþing holding the centre and those functions which the commonholds allowed it to retain.

The Frumrit group (“Originals”, reflecting their belief that Hringur Slátrari and the founders of the Alliance had been betrayed) was larger than Vaki, more argumentative and much less willing to co-operate with a system which it saw as lacking validity. Vestan – whom the group largely characterised as a sell-out – found herself holding together a cabinet and government which could be hobbled in its work by Frumrit – too small a group to control matters, but big enough to destroy them if they saw fit. Steinn’s comment in 2008 that had given the Brennandi its name – “some people just want to watch the world burn” – had rarely seemed more apt.

The straw which would finally break the Vestan administration was, in overall context, a minor matter. Proposals for the reorganisation of internal boundaries within Kisilland, the Helmin overseas territory in western Lestria, had been under discussion for some months before being presented to the parliament in Ediface 2022. These had been thought uncontentious – having been agreed in principle with the Landsráð in Matshöfn already – but Frumrit’s insistence that the new departments be divided for oversight purposes among the commonholds – caused outrage and flew in the face of the Samþykkiræða principles which had overlain much Helmin policy towards Kisilland since the eponymous speech in 1967. While Frumrit’s counter-proposal failed, the vote was much closer than expected and saw some embarrassing defections from the government side.

Vestan, who cast her vote from a wheelchair after breaking her leg in a fall at home a week earlier, appeared more deflated than angry at the result, but her decision to surrender the alráðherra’s office two days later still surprised many. She cited a “weariness of spirit” and a sense that “our country is embarking on new challenges which will require fresher minds and new ways of thought” in her resignation speech to the Fólksdeild. Her recommendation to the cabinet and althein Minna Gráspör that Sannhildar Eldhress succeed her was accepted without issue, and she formally stepped down on 28 Ediface.

Retirement

Vestan spent three months away from the political arena, making very little comment to the press; however, in Metrial 2023 it was announced that she would be taking up a position as Helminthasse’s ambassador to Tassedar. She presented her credentials in Aspar in the following month.