He argued for the following reforms: creation of a legislative parliament (Imperial Duma) elected via a democratic franchise; granting of civil liberties; establishing a cabinet government and a 'constitutional order'. These demands, which basically comprised the political programme of the Liberation Movement, were an attempt to isolate the political Left by pacifying the liberals. Witte emphasised that repression would be only a temporary solution to the problem, and a risky one, because he believed the armed forces — whose loyalty was now in question — could collapse if they were to be used against the masses. Most of the military advisers to the Tsar agreed with Witte, as did the Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Trepov, who wielded considerable influence at court. Only when Nicholas II's cousin Grand Duke Nikolai threatened to shoot himself if he did not agree to Witte's demands, following the Tsar's request for him to accept appointment as dictator, did the Tsar agree. He was embarrassed to have been forced by a former "railway clerk", a man who was a bureaucrat and "businessman," to relinquish his autocratic rule. Witte later said that the Tsar's court were ready to use the Manifesto as a temporary concession, and later return to autocracy "when the revolutionary tide subsided".