Jason Gilchrist

Jason Gilchrist (born 23rd February 1968, Bradley, Central Province) is a Navan politician who was the President of Nava between 2012 and 2016. He is a member of the Conservative Party and was previously a member of the House of Representatives from 2002 to 2008 and a Senator representing Central Province from 2008 to 2012.

Biography
Gilchrist was born and grew up in the small town of Bradley in northwestern Central Province. He studied accounting at the University of Hebbington and in the mid-1990s started working for the Conservative Party, initially working as an accountant for its Central Province regional headquarters and then rising in management. He was put on the Conservative Party list for the 2002 House of Representatives election and was elected to the House of Representatives. He gradually rose in prominence within the party, reaching 9th place on the party list by the 2006 House of Representatives election.

In 2008, Conservative Senator from Central Province Peter McMurray decided to retire and the Conservative Party nominated Gilchrist to be his replacement. Gilchrist won the open seat in the 2008 Senate elections and became a Senator. In 2012, Gilchrist ran for the Conservative nomination for the presidency, making the argument that after defeats in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections the party needed a "new generation of leadership" to win again. Gilchrist won the nomination and named Kevin Talovan as his running mate, making history as the first time a Navani person had been nominated on a presidential ticket by the Conservative Party. Gilchrist defeated Social Party candidate James Daniels in the 2012 presidential election.

Gilchrist's presidency generally gained a negative reputation. One major factor contributing to this was that numerous members of his cabinet were embroiled in scandal: Minister of Land George Barnham was accused of corruption for preferentially giving government contracts to companies he had ties to, Minister of Justice Frank Roberts was charged with sexual assault and Vice President Kevin Talovan attracted controversy with remarks that were considered Islamophobic and xenophobic. Additionally, the most major political project undertaken by Gilchrist's administration, involving the privatisation of public transport with the goal of decreasing government debt and "improving efficiency" resulted in many service outages and delays and was generally perceived as a failure. Barnham and Roberts were out of the cabinet before 2016 and for the 2016 presidential election Gilchrist replaced Talovan as his running mate with Bruce Dennington, a former Governor of Southcentral Cape Province who had a solidly conservative record but a friendly public image and was thus considered a "safe" choice to replace the controversial Talovan. However, the removal of Talovan from the ticket angered Navani and the replacements did not manage to shake the reputation of Gilchrist's government as being incompetent, leading to Gilchrist being defeated for re-election by Social Party candidate Hakim Nassour.