1320, Pandora's Box
20 BBY, March 7.
This was a highly significant date in the history of the Galactic Republic, because on this day, the Galactic Senate passed the bill—"The Act for the Complete Abolition of Local Defense Fleets"—by a narrow margin of roughly 1.5 percentage points.
Under this act, all local defense fleets belonging to planets and sectors would be placed under the ownership of the Republic Navy. The Republic Navy would establish their designations, assign officers, and manage them centrally.
Naturally, those planets were unwilling, because everyone knew that surrendering their local defense fleets meant placing their very survival in the hands of the Galactic Republic. The Galactic Republic made it sound nice now, saying that whenever trouble arose, the Republic fleet would arrive at once. But before long, their planets could be in complete chaos and they still would not see a single hair of the Republic fleet!
The problem was that the Galactic Republic enforced this act compulsorily. Although the act did not explicitly state what would happen if a planet refused to hand over its local defense fleet, that was precisely what made it so frightening—because they did not even know what the Galactic Republic might do to them!
After a period of deadlock, Quat Planet and Corellia were the first to set an example by handing over their local defense fleets to the Galactic Republic. After that, the vast majority of planets also relinquished command of their local defense fleets.
But those were entirely different matters.
For wealthy powers like Quat Planet and Corellia, even without local defense fleets, they could still organize massive fleets under the name of escort fleets. Besides, while they had technically handed over their local defense fleets, the Republic had merely assigned them naval designations. Their garrisons remained where