abstract
| - Martin van Staden (born Sept 1, 1970) current President of Dragonial. He is the first White President since 1989 to hold the office. Van Staden was a junior Dragonial Senator from Capital City from January 2005 until November 2008, when he resigned following his election to the presidency. Van Staden is a graduate of Pretoria University and Boer Law School. He worked as a community organizer in Cape City prior to earning his law degree, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Cape City before serving three terms in the Natal Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Bloemfontein from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Dragonial House of Representatives in 2000, van Staden was elected to the Dragonial Senate in November 2004. Van Staden delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. During his tenure as Senator, he served on several committees, including the Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works, Veterans' Affairs, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. After a particularly close campaign in the 2008 CC4SPAWN presidential primary against rival Jake Willian Olivier, he won his party's nomination as a candidate for president, becoming the first major White candidate for president since 1989. In the 2009 general election, he defeated BAA candidate Jacob ZumZum and was sworn in as president on March 11, 2009.
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