THE CONSOLIDATION OF PARLIAMENTARISM AFTER THE DICTATORSHIP

A. The restoration of democracy and the preparation of a new Constitution

The dictatorial regime collapsed in July 1974. The government of "National Unity" which was immediately formed under the leadership of Constantine Karamanlis proclaimed a plebiscite to decide whether the Country should be a kingdom. An overwhelming majority of 70% of the people voted in favour of a republic, while the elections that had taken place a little earlier had given the New Democracy party of C. Karamanlis a large majority in Parliament.

According to the Constitutional Act of the third and fourth of October 1974, the so-called 5th Revisionary Parliament took as its basic work document the Draft Constitution as prepared by the government formed after the elections of November 17, 1974. As far as the provisions concerning Parliament were concerned, the Draft had included some of proposals of 1963, which were finally adopted by the National Assembly.

The major issue which preocupied the works of the Revisionary Parliament, however, was the one referring to the distribution of political power between the Chief of State and the majority in Parliament; in other words, the issue of the regulatory competence of the President of the Republic to issue non countersigned acts in appointing the Cabinet and dissolving the Parliament. This was a particulary delicate issue, since during the previous fifty years the two major political crises the Country had known (in 1915 and 1965) were precisely the result of the exercise of such regulatory powers by the Crown. The divergence of opinions between the majority and the opposition resulted in the Constitution not being voted unanimously by all the political forces in the Country.


B. The unperturbed functioning of parliamentary institutions

Despite the fact that the Constitution was voted by the majority in Parliament only and the opposition had different views on fundamental issues regarding parliamentary institutions, after the collapse of the dictatorship the regime functioned smoothly. In the period between 1975 and 1981, the government could easily implements its policies, profiting from a solid majority in Parliament together with the common political perspectives it shared with the Chief of the State.

A politically significant change in the Country's government occurred in 1981, however it did not put the constitutional institutions to a test. Between the years 1981 and 1985 the majority in Parliament did not share a common political perspective with the President of the Republic; nevertheless, parliamentarism still funcioned in the same smooth way as before, centred around the gravitational force of the majority in Parliament. Thus, the subsequent revision of the Constitution in the year 1985-1986, which abolished most of the regulatory powers of the President of the Republic, confined itself in fact to putting the constitutional practice of the previous decate into the explicit language of the Costitution. For the first time in the history of the country the revision took place in accordance with the pertinent provisions of the Constitution, a fact which further testifies to the strength of the parliamentary institutions of the country after the collapse of the dictatorship.

(c) 1996 Macedonian Press Agency