Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/160

all men and women 21 years of age vote for members of chamber of deputies, while in the senate elections voters must be 26 years of age. The senate is meant to be principally a controlling organ, preventing hasty or loosely drawn legislation and generally saving the president the unpleasant task of returning bills with his objections. The president is elected by the joint session of the two houses for a term of seven years; he may be elected for a second term, but after that seven years must elapse, before he can be elected again. This provision does not apply to the first president, which means President Masaryk; so the constitution says explicitly. And while this undoubtedly means a life term of service at the head of the state for Prof. Masaryk, the report which appeared in the newspapers here to the effect that Masaryk was made a president for life by the new constitution was erroneous. As the president can only act through ministers responsible to the National Assembly and supported by the majority of the deputies, it seems very likely that Masaryk’s successor will not have much more power than the French president. There is a very limited provision in the constitution for use of referendum, but on the whole the document resembles the federal constitution far more than the average state constitution in that it provides for strictly representative government, rather than government by direct action of the people. It goes in this respect even beyond the federal constitution, as the Czechoslovak president is elected by parliament, and the terms of the deputies and senators (six and eight years respectively) are longer than in this country. On the whole, a political student is inclined to call the new Czechoslovak constitution a conservative document and one that ought to make for stability of government.

The constitution itself is a brief document which outlines the structure of the government and contains a bill of rights. In addition to it the committee on constitution reported to the National Assembly five other measures which are to be considered as part of the constitution and can be amended only by a vote of three fifths of the entire membership of both houses. The first of these supplementary fundamental laws deals with the question of racial minorities and grants them larger rights than Czechoslovakia was bound to do by its agreement with the Allies. All districts in which any racial minority numbers more than 20% are to be considered racially mixed districts, and the members of the minority may use their language in public offices and courts, as well as have their own schools. Election law provides for large circuits with 15 or large circuits with 15 or more members each; each party nominates a full ticket, and the voter must vote for the entire ticket and not for individual candidates on it. The number of votes cast is divided by the number of members to be elected, and this quotient is applied to each party vote; if the vote cast for a party entitles it to five members, the first five names on its ticket are elected. The fractions from all the electoral districts of the entire Republic are then added together and parties with the largest fractions get one or more members. The scheme is fair to all parties and to all races, and incidentally it secures deputies who are not tied too closely to local interests, but who consider themselves first of all representatives of the entire nation. But on the other hand it overemphasizes the importance of political parties, especially as primaries in the American sense are unknown and all nominations are made by party organizations. The law defining the powers of the senate and the law creating an electoral court merely carry out the general provisions of the constitution. Of great practical importance is the law creating counties (župy) with an average population of about half a million, divided into districts (okresy); their number and boundaries are not available at the time of this writing.

Immediately after the proclamation of the constitution the government announced the date of elections for the new parliament. The elections for the chamber of deputies are to take place April 18 and for the senate April 25. Those dates mark the close of the revolutionary period of the Czechoslovak Republic. Up to now all public authority proceeded from the National Assembly which is a revolutionary organ constituted by Czechoslovak political parties in November 1918 without direct appeal to the people. It is thus analogous to the Continental Congress which led the fight for American independence. The National Assembly elected the president, gave the coun-