If she is looking for somebody to ask, General Syndulla has relevant opinions! Such as that planets should have the right to remain completely autonomous, and that if that isn't possible, the Confederacy is clearly the better option due to its lack of restrictions and commitment to freedom. The Confederacy isn't an oppressive tangle of bureaucracy like certain other groups he could mention, it's just an agreement between various independent peoples to protect each other and work together for their common goals. More planets should join it. Like Ryloth. Has he ever mentioned that? Well, he would love to mention that! Even if it annoys various officials running Ryloth! And at the very least, they should get out of the Republic.

Kina...thinks the aims of the Confederacy are admirable, in some senses, but that the membership of the Confederacy betrays them simply by - well, she's speaking somewhat hyperbolically, here, but her point stands - half its core constituency being Trade Federation client states still under the Trade Federation's metaphorical thumbs.

You know, the people who, mostly on their own initiative, decided that a war, and all its associated death and destruction, was an entirely appropriate response to a trade dispute, and then attacked the Republic Senate for mostly no reason.

Given that, and knowing that these systems will need time to develop self-government if they want to have any government that's actually under their control...

Well, she does have a few thoughts, she's just workshopping them right now, but something clearly needs to be done to ensure that planets like Tatooine can truly be free, and it's certainly not that squabbling mess she sat through earlier - but perhaps in sneaking while both factions' power-hungry rancors squabble over their planned meal, the humble and resilient - well, both metaphorical and literal Jawas - could get at the parts they need to build something useful.

Most of the things the Trade Federation did were because of Palpatine's manipulation, although that doesn't necessarily make it better. He agrees that the Federation is pretty corrupt, but they don't actually have much control over the other Confederacy states; joining would not force them to do whatever the Trade Federation wants.

Putting these planets under the jurisdiction of both the Republic and the Confederacy doesn't seem like a good way to get them independence; it'll only make it harder for them to separate themselves from the system. It's possible that they could play the factions' opposing aims against each other, so that neither would be able to control them, but he's worried that letting these planets be a political target instead of just a settled issue would only increase the amount of pressure that each side tried to put on them. Not everything would cancel out; having to obey the knotted mess of laws that will inevitably arise will just make it harder for them to do what they want.

Kina's working from the wrong framework. You don't respond to people trying to control you by making more and more regulations to try to balance out their power, you stop making things complicated and try to remove restrictions until you get as many of your freedoms back as you can. Putting Tatooine and these other planets into a specified, rigorous structure under two governments is not going to decrease the number of restrictions on them!

...You know what, he does have a point.  Still, there needs to be transitional support, if he doesn't want Tatooine to continue being problematically itself, just under new management - and she's relatively certain that the Order can't handle providing this alone.  Someone needs to figure out how that should work, and that's what she came up with for a framework.

So what would he do, in order to keep order while Tatooine, and dozens of other planets besides, are built up into places where local government is capable of operating by rule of law rather than rule of biggest stick?

Yes, Tatooine is obviously in a lot of trouble. He's not sure how Kina's plan is supposed to help with that; does she really expect joining an interplanetary government to benefit them? The other Republic planets wouldn't really have much of an incentive to help Tatooine, only to tax the hell out of it and transform the disorder into an advantage for themselves. (To be clear, the same also applies to the Confederacy, if to a much lesser extent, and he would only recommend joining them because it seems like they'll be forced to join someone.)

He suspects that just not having the Hutts will be enough to set them in the right direction. Without everyone being forced to pay tribute and fear the Hutts' power, they should hopefully be free to live better lives. As for how they can do that... well, there aren't a lot of areas in which Tatooine would have business interests, although Kina seems right that tourism would be something to look into. Honestly, maybe people should just try to evacuate. Although it'll be tough to afford that.

What even are Tatooine's exports?

Dilarium oil and silicax oxalate, two substances that can only be mined on Tatooine. They're both incredibly expensive, but also incredibly rare, meaning that anyone who attempts to mine them will have a tiny chance of becoming very very very rich but will most likely find nothing and starve. This has had wonderful effects on the economy.

Seems simple enough as long as there are large groups of collaborating miners, so that they'll average enough to pay everyone a decent salary. And... looks like the Hutts had previously made it impossible for any such corporation to form, except for the ones that were owned by them, and giving pretty much all profits to them. Well, now that the Hutts are gone, hopefully the economy will be less restricted, and people will be able to cooperate and survive!

But yes, there will of course be many problems still existing. Does Kina really think the Republic, or even the Confederacy, would actually help? That... doesn't seem in line with how they usually operate.

She can't speak for the Republic Senate.  She can say that Vice-Chancellor Antilles is a genuinely good man.  She can say that while Count Dooku is not evil, and she expects him to continue being not evil, she's worried that he'll lose - or has already lost - the ability to be proactively good without expending effort.  ...She's worried about what's whispering in his ear, really.  It's not a friend or ally to anyone, not even its servants.  Dooku keeps that in mind, she's sure, but...all people have flaws.  Goodness knows she does, or this would have been solved long ago.

...Okay, that's not actually counterfactually possible, because she's too young to have been getting involved in politics earlier, and honestly isn't sure how she's doing this now, but still.

She thinks that the best way to get Tatooine to a place where it can stand on its own is to give the Republic and Confederacy something they think fighting over will help them secure advantages with the eventual planetary governments - to turn the corruption against itself - at least, what remains of it after what...happened on Coruscant.  Most of the corruption...either left, or was removed from office.

(She takes a moment to breathe slowly after just mentioning the Battle of Coruscant.  Sometimes, she wakes up in a cold sweat, having just shot Sheev Palpatine in the head.)

(She doesn't regret that in the slightest - but it's wrong, that she still had to do it.)

But really, Kina's plan is for fighting a bureaucratic delaying action, to give Tatooine, and everywhere else, time.  Not a single winning maneuver.  This is an interim governing procedure, with interim authority, or at least that's her intended design, here.

General Syndulla saw how she fought...what was her name, the bounty hunter, with the lightsaber, right?  It's sort of like that.

Giving the Confederacy and the Republic a fight they can get focused on, luring them closer to something they won't pay attention to, stalling their attempts to strike - until they end up realizing that there's something else that they neglected, that blindsides them.

Urgh. It is possible that Kina's plan is less awful than everything else, but it seems like there are generally a lot of vulnerabilities when your idea for helping someone is to throw the two most powerful forces in the galaxy at them, and deliberately call for a political conflict in the hope that you can trick them.

And is this really going to be temporary? That, in particular, seems like it would fail even given the somewhat questionable premises. She's trying to set up incentives that lure the Republic and Confederacy into helping these planets, but how is she possibly going to make them voluntarily leave them alone in five years? Once they have power, they'll want to hold onto it.

How is she going to make them leave the planets alone in five years?  She's playing them against eachother, again.  Neither of them will want the other to continue to have the influence of this transitional government, ergo if they have a reason to pressure the other out, they'll take it.  It's mutually assured destruction.

No, they would each prefer to share control, than for these planets to be completely out of their reach. They'll never agree to leave just to deal a blow against the other side.

Kina does think, to be clear, that public opinion and precedent both mean that the Republic and the Confederacy have to respect the self-determination votes, which are the actual means of establishing "and kriff off".

Maybe, although he's not sure if the public would even have a strong objection to the contract being violated. Still, if they get an explicit agreement beforehand that they'll both be willing to respect these planets' wishes after a clearly defined time frame, that should help.

Well, if Kina wants to go forward with this, she'll at least want to do something about the previously mentioned issue of the Jedi Order not being neutral. At all. It would make more sense to have things determined by a Republic representative, a Confederacy representative, and an elected representative from the planet itself. That would probably maximize their ability to make the Republic and Confederacy think they can get power, while actually leaving power in the hands of the people, because in practice their representative will decide everything except in cases where the Republic and Confederacy agree with each other - and those they never had a chance of opposing anyway.

Of course, if the elected representative is horrible, then that won't go well. But they're most likely going to be less terrible than someone from the Republic or Confederacy would have been, given that they would have a higher interest in their own planet.

...Did he not read the bit where Jedi-backed appointees are the stopgap measure for while there's not a government that's stable enough to have elections?  But yes, she can spell that out if that'd help, or fiddle with the wording.

Even if there isn't much of a structure for elections set up yet, he would pretty much take anyone over a Jedi, just because that would mean throwing everything to the Republic. They can probably get an election set up pretty soon.

And yes, Syndulla will admit that some hastily organized election probably won't be good enough to find some amazing leader; there are no well-known politicians who weren't working for the Hutts. Most people will probably be swayed into electing someone with charisma but no actual ability to manage things. But that would be better than just letting the Republic take over everything!

...Just how badly miscalibrated is she on the average Jedi's expected behavior if it is a highly ranked public figure's approximate conclusion that they or those they choose to appoint will just roll over to Republic demands, whatever they are, when directly tasked to advocate for a planet's wellbeing, General Syndulla?  Did he see what happened on Naboo?  The Order has, for a long time, been complacent about standing ready to determine the right thing to do, in the moment, or what sources they could trust...but they've had their blindfold torn off, these days, and she will not let them backslide on that if she has to stand for Tatooine herself.

She really wants someone that she can trust to raise a stink if there's blatant abuse given actual authority, basically, and she thinks the Jedi are the best available organization as far as having any skill in finding such people goes.  Perhaps combining local nomination petitions with a Jedi-backed interview would work, for that first period?  She just doesn't think that hoping the power vacuum fills itself cleanly will work in the slightest.

He did see what happened on Naboo, and he might support having Jedi there to help out. Actually putting them in the government still seems dangerous, though. Kina's probably right that the Jedi have good intentions, but they work for the Republic. Technically, the Republic would have the authority to order them to vote a certain way. And yes, going that far might not be very politically viable, but in any case, the Jedi would still have a pretty strong pressure to cave into Republic demands.

Maybe Kina's right about having the Jedi just recommend someone, though. As long as there are some checks to make sure the people approve of them, and that the Republic won't have any influence on them. Ideally, they should look for someone from a neutral world. Although, of course, quite a few of the neutral worlds are themselves in trouble with crime.

Kina thinks that recruiting from local trusted community figures ought to help with that problem, who she imagines a no-campaigning-allowed community vote would turn up.

Oh, he had thought she wanted to find someone who wasn't necessarily from Tatooine. He's certainly in favor of the Jedi finding a trusted local leader, as long as the Republic isn't peering over their shoulders in the process!

Kina can be pretty sure of that not happening.  And if anyone tries anyway, she'll ask Mace Windu to Glare at them until they stop.

That has proven to be an effective way to solve one's problems.

Syndulla will thank her for the conversation. He's glad to know there's at least one Jedi who takes initiative with helping people!

Kina thanks him for helping her help others, in turn.  She has appreciated working with him.

Pretty soon, Obi-Wan will call Kina, just to check in. And also slightly to brag. Apparently he is now a Jedi Knight!

"Congratulations, Obi-Wan.  I'm proud of you.  ...What was it like?"

"It... was one of the more interesting experiences of my life," he says. "I had to go through two different Force illusions. The Trial of the Spirit was about fighting... sort of a dark side me? The Trial of Insight, I don't think I'm supposed to spoil for you. And then I had to pass the Trial of Skill, which was a lot of lightsaber tests, and I had to fight all these droids and even a Jedi Master, and the Trial of Courage I just finished yesterday, it was the raid on Nal Hutta, I actually beat this bounty hunter named Zuckuss, he's supposed to be one of the top hunters in the galaxy! And they didn't make me do the Trial of the Flesh because I had the fight with Maul."

"So... yeah! Jedi Knight!"