It didn’t happen overnight. The republic didn’t fall to a coup or an invasion; it eroded, quietly and insidiously. In the beginning, there were small betrayals a legal loophole exploited here, a norm defied there. The early cracks in the democratic foundation spread slowly, spiderweb fractures across the facade of institutions. Most people hardly noticed the first fissures, or when they did, they dismissed them as politics as usual.

Niklas Osterman