Constitution of Menghe

The Constitution of Menghe is the supreme law of Menghe. The present version of the constitution was adopted in 1990 in the wake of the Decembrist Revolution and heavily amended in 2022 as part of a package of democratic reforms introduced in the wake of the Second Pan-Septentrion War.

History

On 21 December 1987, Choe Sŭng-min seized power in the Decembrist Revolution, which despite its name more closely resembled a military coup. For the first few months after the revolution, Choe led the country through the Interim Council for National Restoration, an ad-hoc military junta made up of high-ranking officers in the Menghean Army and some civilian collaborators. The Socialist Republic of Menghe was formally proclaimed on 25 May 1988, but for the first two years of its existence, it lacked a written constitution.

The current Menghean constitution was promulgated on 1 June 1990, slightly more than two years after the Socialist Republic of Menghe was established. Its original text reflected the reformist direction of the early Choe regime, with relatively generous guarantees of citizens' rights and freedoms and a nominally democratic character.

Since then, the Menghean constitution has been repeatedly amended to reflect the changing nature of Menghean politics.

Former constitutions

Namyang Constitution

This document was promulgated in 1878, during Menghe's Three States Period. It represented the Namyang Government's first effort to compose a Western-style constitution and thereby modernize the country. It provided for limited suffrage among landowners and educated elites, and guaranteed some basic rights, while vesting power in an elected assembly and a prime minister.

1904 Constitution

On 2 August 1901, the states of Namyang and Sinyi concluded a formal peace treaty, ending the Three States Period and forming the Federative Republic of Menghe. This peace treaty was accompanied by the Articles of Federation, which provided a provisional institutional framework for Menghe's new federal system of government.

In 1904, the Federal Assembly formally ratified a permanent constitution. This document guaranteed a similar package of rights as the Namyang Constitution, including suffrage for landowners and educated persons, basic political freedoms, and the abolition of aristocratic privileges. In accordance with the treaty signed three years earlier, the 1904 Constitution officially recognized the Emperor as Menghe's head of state, but relegated him to a purely ceremonial position, conferring actual political power on the Prime Minister, who served as head of government.

A major amendment to the Federal Constitution was passed in 1920, extending the vote to all mentally sound male citizens over the age of 25.

Imperial Charter

After Kwon Chong-hoon seized power via a military coup on 8 February 1927, his provisional government drew up the Imperial Charter, which served as the supreme law of the Greater Menghean Empire. This document vested supreme political power in the Emperor, but established a Council of Ministers led by a Premier to advise the Emperor and implement his directives. It abolished the Federal Assembly and the various Regional Assemblies, and stated that all local executive offices would be filled via appointment, thereby ending even symbolic democracy in Menghe. It also ended Menghe's federative system, replacing it with a much more centralized unitary system of government.

Under Kwon Chong-hoon, who was appointed Premier by the Yŏngtong Emperor in a show of legitimation, the Premier was the main locus of political power in practice, with the Emperor remaining largely symbolic. After Kim Myŏng-hwan ascended to the throne in 1933, tensions between the Premier and the Emperor steadily escalated, culminating in Kwon's deposition in 1937. Kim Myŏng-hwan appointed a new Premier as replacement, but from that point onward he exercised primary political authority in Menghe. The Imperial Charter, however, was never amended after Kim Myŏng-hwan's self-coup, as the balance of political power at the top depended on practical political influence rather than the rule of law.

1953 Constitution

The 1953 Constitution was ratified by the Republic of Menghe on the day of its formation. It had been drawn up with the help of Anglian occupation officials, and reflected Anglian legal influence, restoring a parliamentary and federal system of government with provinces rather than regions as the primary federal unit (though nominally the country remained the Republic of Menghe, rather than the Second Federative Republic of Menghe). It guaranteed a wider range of freedoms than the 1904 Constitution, including universal adult suffrage for all mentally sound citizens over the age of 20, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. Article 11 of the 1953 Constitution, however, created a major loophole in these guarantees, giving the government the legal authority to prosecute anyone found guilty of aiding violent groups or spreading seditious material. This Article was amended in 1955 to formally ban Communism, Socialism, and Socialist-aligned movements. This reflected the interests of both the Republic of Menghe government and its foreign advisors, who were still engaged in the Continuation War against communist and nationalist guerrilla forces.

1971 Constitution

For the first few years after the end of the Menghean War of Liberation, the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe functioned without a formal written constitution, with the Menghean People's Communist Party instead ruling by decree and organizing ad-hoc single-party elections. Work on a new constitution was already underway in 1968, but it was postponed in 1969 when General Secretary Sun Tae-jun died without nominating a clear successor.

The draft constitution was only finalized and ratified on 8 May 1971, five months after Sim Jin-hwan came to power as General Secretary. On paper, it guaranteed a wider range of rights than any of Menghe's previous constitutions, including full gender equality, freedom of religion, and a wide range of social and economic rights. In practice, however, many of these rights had little meaning in practice: despite official declarations that Menghe was a democratic people's republic with full political freedoms, in practice the MPCP forbade opposition candidates from running in elections and routinely arreted and tortured dissidents. Sim's administration did, however, generally follow the 1971 Constitution's provisions on the institutional structure of higher government, which included the Assembly of People's Representatives, a formal legislature, and the State Council, a parallel body to the Politburo of the MPCP.

Organizationally, the 1971 Constitution established a unitary system of government, though as part of its guarantee to Menghe's ethnic minorities, it did provide for the creation of six Autonomous Provinces for the country's regional ethnic minority groups. These replaced the Autonomous Regions which had governed those areas from 1964 to 1971.

Structure

National Symbols (Chapter 4)

Article 132 declares that Donggyŏng is the capital city of Menghe, and requires that the National Assembly, the State Council (formerly the Supreme Council), the NSCC, and the Supreme People's Court must hold their regular meetings within Donggyŏng's administrative boundaries. It also designates Donggwangsan Palace as the office and official residence of the Prime Minister. Article 132.4 permits the central government to relocate its operations to a provisional capital in the event that a war, threat of war, natural disaster, civil unrest, or other emergency should render Donggyŏng unfit for national leaders to safely execute their duties.

Article 135 defines the Suk Star Flag as the flag of Menghe. This flag was previously adopted by decree on 17 May 1988, but lacked formal constitutional recognition. Article 135.2 forbids state agencies outside of the Ministry of National Defense from using the Flag of the Menghean Armed Forces in place of the Suk Star Flag to represent Menghe as a nation, though the relevant clause only entered into effect on 1 January 1992. This ended the informal practice, necessitated by a shortage of new flags and the delay in passing a new flag law, of using the Flag of the Menghean Armed Forces as an interim or provisional flag.

Article 137 recognizes Let Morning Shine on These Mountains and Rivers as the national anthem, or aegukga, of Menghe. The original version of Article 137 only accorded official status to the first verse, thereby dropping the then-current second verse, which had been composed in 1969 with reference to the spirit of labor, and the original second and third verses composed in 1939, which celebrated Menghe's mission to achieve victory in the Pan-Septentrion War and lead the Eastern peoples of the world to prosperity. An amendment in 1994 gave official constitutional recognition to a new second verse, which references the Decembrist spirit and the Path of National Reconstruction.

Amendments

The original text of the 1990 Constitution stated that amendments to the Constitution must be approved by a 3/4 majority in the National Assembly and signed by the Chairman of the Supreme Council. Though this may formally present a high threshold, the National Assembly was dominated by the Menghean Socialist Party, its coalition allies, and party-approved independent candidates until 2019, making the amendment process a formality.

The batch of amendments passed in 2022 included a revision to this clause, stating that constitutional amendment instead requires the approval of 2/3 of the National Assembly and the signautre of the Prime Minister, an office created by the same amendment to replace the Chairman of the Supreme Council. Because the Menghean Socialist Party held only 68.7% of National Assembly seats following the semi-competitive 2019 elections, this amendment required the approval of representatives from the coalitional Social Democratic Party and Labor Party, as well as independents. Because it was bundled with many democratic reforms, this amendment still reached the 3/4 threshold, even though it softened the amendment process and did not satisfy independent citizen proposals to require a nationwide referendum on future amendments.