Constitution of Asase Lewa

Constitution of Asase Lewa
Jurisdiction	Asase Lewa
Ratified	2 March 1969 (1969-03-02)
Date effective	1 May 1969 (1969-05-01)
System	Federal council republic with party-state elements
Branches	Two (Workers' Councils and Judiciary)
Head of state	Presidium
Chambers	Unicameral (Supreme Workers' Council)
Executive	Presidium responsible to the Supreme Workers' Council
Judiciary	Constitutional Court Supreme Court Supreme Court of the Constituent Republics Provincial Courts Workers' Courts Comrades' Courts
Federalism	Federalism, alongside national personal autonomy for pygmies and other traditionally nomadic groups
Entrenchments	17
Location	People's Archives, Edudzi Agyeman City, Asase Lewa
Signatories	309 members of the People's Constituent Assembly
Supersedes	Constitution of the Bahian People's Republic

The Constitution of Asase Lewa is the supreme law of the Bahian Council Republic of Asase Lewa. The Constitution was drafted by the People's Constituent Assembly, an assembly formed as the result of negotiations between the Asalewan Section of the Workers' International and rebel mass organizations in the environment of the Protective-Corrective Revolution and comprised of representatives from the Section, the mass organizations, and embryonic, primarily rebel-dominated, elected Workers' Councils. After the Assembly convened in 1969 and finalized its constitutional draft in January 1969, the proposed Constitution was approved by referendum in March 1969. The successor to the 1953 Constitution of the Bahian People's Republic, the Constitution marks Asase Lewa's transition from a single-party state under the rule of the Asalewan Section to being a council republic, albeit one with constitutionally-entrenched powers in the part of the Section.

Since 1969, the Constitution has remained the supreme law of Asase Lewa, though having undergone notable amendments since then, primarily in the late 1970s and early 1980s; in the late 1970s, the Constitution was amended to grant national personal autonomy for pygmies and other members of traditionally nomadic groups, while in the early 1980s, negotiations between rebel-dominated urban workers' councils and the Asalewan Section in the wake of the Psychological-Technological Revolution, a self-coup by Asalewan Section General Secretary Kayode Temidare, led to substantial constitutional changes, notably the formalization of Kayode's actions through the doctrine of Perpetual-Cyclical Revolution, expanded checks by Workers' Councils on the Asalewan Section, and modest political liberalization by repealing provisions of the Constitution calling for family abolition and replacing state atheism with a doctrine of laïcité.

Called "in many ways, the quintessential councilist constitution" by Algirdas Jancius, a noted Valduvian scholar of Asalewan and Bahian politics, the Asalewan Constitution is notable for combining a strong assertion of constitutional supremacy rather than parliamentary sovereignty—as the Constitution was drafted by a constituent assembly, rather than a legislature, and imposes a strict constitutional framework in which legislative bodies can act—with an assertion in the right to resist and right of revolution, with the Constitution being one of the only ones in the world to provide an explicit legal framework for the end of itself and the state it represents, either through subsumption into a Pan-Bahian state or the state's withering away. The Constitution is also notable for an extensive number of entrenched clauses, both clauses enumerating unalienable rights and clauses establishing Asase Lewa's councilist political system and participatory economic system, with the aim of protecting the "proletarian, free, Bahian, and councilist" basic character of the state.

Amendments

List of amendments

No.	Subject	Ratification
		Approved by Supreme Workers' Council	Ratified by public referendum
1st	Establishes national personal autonomy through Non-Territorial Workers' Councils for pygmies, traditionally nomadic populations, and other historically oppressed minority groups.	October 17, 1977	February 24, 1978
2nd	Established a framework for Cyclical Revolution, a state of exception in which the Presidium of the Asalewan Section can rule by decree, unless the Supreme Workers' Council votes to end the Cyclical Revolution by two-thirds vote.	September 11, 1981	December 17, 1981
3rd	Allows the Presidium of the Asalewan Section the power of judicial review by overturning laws contrary to the Constitution by two-thirds vote.	September 11, 1981	December 17, 1981
4th	Established a framework for Cyclical Revolution, a state of exception in which the Presidium of the Asalewan Section can rule by decree, unless the Supreme Workers' Council votes to end the Cyclical Revolution by two-thirds vote.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
5th	Limits the percentage of candidates for public office that the Asalewan Section can veto to one-third of candidates for any Workers' Council, and allows the Supreme Workers' Council to overturn a veto of candidates by two-thirds vote.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
6th	Allows the Supreme Workers' Council to veto changes to the Asalewan Section's Constitution by two-thirds vote, and the Presidium of the Asalewan Section to veto changes to the Constitution by simple majority.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
6th	Allows the Supreme Workers' Council to veto the Section's dismissal of People's Revolutionary Army officers, and Section appointments of PRA political commissars, by two-thirds vote.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
7th	Repealed the Constitution's explicit call for family abolition, instead calling for the abolition only of oppressive and patriarchal family structures, the establishment of workers' crèches, and the socialization and compensation of housework.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
8th	Established freedom of religion, replacing hardline state atheism, thouh preserving the title, with a milder laïcité.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
9th	Provides a framework of electoral commissions for verifying and overturning elections, and directs the state to invite electoral observers from socialist countries, parties, organizations, and private citizens.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
10th	Allows the Supreme Workers' Council to overturn a period of Cyclical Revolution by two-thirds vote.	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
11th	Allows the Supreme Workers' Council to overturn the Asalewan Section vetoing a law by a two-thirds vote	October 23, 1983	January 18, 1984
12th	Raises the maximum population threshold of the Supreme Workers' Council from 15,000 to 25,000, of the Workers' Councils of the constituent republics from 5,000 to 10,000, and of the provinces and Free Cities from 2,500 to 5,000.	April 20, 1987	August 15, 1987
13th	Allows the courts to restrict the suffrage and electoral rights of someone who has engaged in armed insurrection against the state or attempted to alter the proletarian, free, councilist, and Bahian character of the state and the country.	May 22, 1992	October 10, 1992
14th	Removes the limits on the Asalewan Section's ability to veto candidates in regions that have witnessed an outbreak of tribalist or comprador-bourgeois violence within the past five years, or in regions that have witnessed armed insurrection against the state within the past ten years.	May 22, 1992	October 10, 1992
15th	Decrees that lower-level Workers' Councils must approve laws that the Presidium of the Supreme Workers' Council passed by decree during a state of emergency, if those laws cover jurisdiction normally granted to that lower-level Workers' Council.	December 7, 1999	March 17, 2000
16th	Raises the maximum population threshold of the Supreme Workers' Council from 25,000 to 50,000.	July 1, 2002	November 11, 2002

See also

• Full text of the Constitution of Asase Lewa
• Constitution of Imagua and the Assimas
• Constitution of West Miersa
• Constitution of Rwizikuru