Nera Chinan today travelled to Naboo to deliver a speech in support of her comrade Jar Jar Binks.

Thank you all for being here today. I’d like to take a brief moment from the campaign trail to remark upon the vicious and false attacks made by the Free Trade Party candidate Padme Naberrie. You may know her as Queen Amidala, but I refuse to use the regnal name of an upstart blue-blooded political hack, particularly when said hack is seeking to depart her role as monarch for the Senate and is thus giving up that name. And certainly, any respect her office would command is forfeited by the undignified bile she has recently published.

Candidate Naberrie has been groomed for politics for an early age by the Naboo with elite opportunities, so it is entirely unsurprising that she would create a patronising and colonial caricature of a fine and decent man, General Jar Jar Binks. She has portrayed General Binks as “unemployed” and an “exile from society”, in contrasted with the resplendent and glorious Naberrie as a Queen interested in promoting security and trade.

Powering through the self-satisfied stench of aristocracy and cutting to the heart of the matter, something Candidate Naberrie could not do because she pathologically cannot bring herself to seriously consider anything other than pedigree, it is utterly laughable that she would assert herself as some kind of competent peacemaker and promoter of trade. Her handling of the Naboo’s trade arrangements was essentially “let’s trust the Nemoidians and be surprised when they turn on us”. Her incompetence is not even the most stunning thing about the Naboo Crisis.

What is far more shocking is that she has the sheer audacity to attack General Binks and portray him as someone who has never contributed to society. While she was gallivanting around the Royal Palace of Theed with her little pea-shooter holding Nute Gunray hostage, General Binks was out in the fields dealing with the actual droid occupation force. He fought bravely, and personally made several decisive contributions to the battle, which not only destroyed a large bulk of the enemy threat but bought both Naberrie and the Naboo Starfighter contingent valuable time. She does not honour his efforts, nor the sacrifices of the Gungan people, who died defending their world from the consequences of her poor trade arrangements and failure to adequately prepare a planetary defence. Her colonial mindset even refuses to recognise his commission as head of the Gungan Army as legitimate employment. An army that fought and died because she asked them to.

But her unwillingness to acknowledge the Gungan people is utterly unsurprising when one looks at her record. Her handling of the Gungan people on Naboo has been nothing short of neglectful rather than reconciliatory, the Jedi had to assist her in her desperate attempt to win over the original inhabitants of that world. She would otherwise have entirely ignored them, which is hardly the behaviour of a dignified and forward-thinking politician interested in bringing about a safer society, as she would have you believe she is. And now finally, even despite the invasion of her planet by a nefarious mega trade corporation, Candidate Naberrie now believes that increased trade and free commerce is the answer! She attacks General Binks for daring to suggest that perhaps unfettered corporate power is a problem that leads to things like the Naboo crisis. Not only has she clearly not learned the lesson of Naboo, she is a blatant turncoat to her own people, and now expects them to elect her to the Galactic Senate!

Perhaps Candidate Naberrie was replaced by a Trade Federation double, or perhaps the plasma mines under Theed Palace have insidious health effects we are not yet aware of. I can’t imagine that it is healthy for the mind to breathe in plasma fumes day-in day-out. Maybe it’s the makeup, who knows. Whatever the cause, even for a career politician under serious threat from someone she views as a racial lesser, Candidate Naberrie has behaved very strangely recently with this Free Trade Party campaign, and I hope for the sake of all Dustig the issue is resolved soon.

In the meantime, she can stay clear of General Binks, a man I know well and whom I admire deeply. It is entirely typical of the decadent, complacent, and corrupt galactic elite that Candidate Naberrie seeks to represent and entrench that she would stoop to such vile lows and assail a decent and compassionate person who simply seeks to give the people of Dustig a real say in their future and prevent another Naboo crisis. May the Force be with Jar Jar Binks, for it certainly is not with Padme Naberrie.