National Assembly (Menghe)
National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Menghe 대멩 사회주의 궁화국 국민 의회 大孟社會主義共和國國民議會 Dae Meng Sahoejuyi Gonghwaguk Gukmin Yihoe | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | |
| Type | |
Term limits | none |
| History | |
| Founded | August 1, 1989 |
| Preceded by | House of People's Representatives |
| Leadership | |
Speaker | Ri Hyo-jin, MSP since 25 May 2009 |
Deputy Speaker | Byŏn Mun-su, MSP since 25 May 2009 |
| Structure | |
| Seats | 278 |
 | |
Political groups |
|
Length of term | 5 years |
| Elections | |
| Closed party-list proportional representation in province-sized multi-member districts | |
First election | 14 July 1989 |
Last election | 14 July 2019 |
Next election | 14 July 2024 |
| Meeting place | |
 | |
| National Assembly Building, Donggyŏng | |
The National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Menghe (Menghean Sinmun: 대멩 사회주의 궁화국 국민 의회, Menghean Gomun: 大孟社會主義共和國國民議會, tr. Dae Meng Sahoejuyi Gonghwaguk Gukmin Yihoe), often abbreviated as National Assembly (국회 / 國會, Gukhoe) is the unicameral legislative body of the Socialist Republic of Menghe. It convenes at the National Assembly Building in Donggyŏng. Each of Menghe's Province-level entities serves as a large multi-member district, with a number of seats proportional to its population. The total number of seats is fixed at 278, with the Chairman of the Supreme Council casting a tie-breaking vote in the event of a deadlock.
Elections for the National Assembly are held every five years on July 14th, with the most recent election taking place in 2019. Candidates are elected from closed party lists, and each district's seats are allocated on the basis of party-list proportional representation. Until recently, only the three parties in the regime-sanctioned UFNR coalition were permitted to run in elections, a rule which guaranteed that even with competitive voting the Menghean Socialist Party would maintain full control of the Assembly. This rule was lifted in 2019, when opposition candidates were allowed to run for the first time under a unified "Independent" party list.
History
Under the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe, the country's legislature was the 1,587-member House of People's Representatives, which convened once every two years. In between sessions, power lay with the People's Presidium, a 154-member body elected by the Congress to oversee policy in the interim. Delegates to the House of People's Representatives were indirectly elected by provincial assemblies, which in turn were indirectly elected by county-level assemblies. The entire process was closely controlled by the Menghean People's Communist Party, which held at least 90% of all seats throughout the 1964-1987 period.
After the Decembrist Revolution, the new military leadership permanently dissolved the House of People's Representatives. In its place, they administered the country through the Interim Council for National Restoration, appointing loyal military officers to govern the country. The new Menghean constitution promulgated on May 5th, 1989, established the National Assembly as the country's new legislative body.
In the first Assembly, 200 representatives were directly elected by the general population in a province-level party-list system, and the remaining 78 were appointed by the Supreme Council to represent the Army and Navy. To prevent a resurgence of the ousted MPCP, only the newly formed Menghean Socialist Party (MSP) and Menghean Social-Democratic Party (MSDP) were permitted to run party lists. In a bow to international opinion, Menghean leaders promised that the reserved military seats and party restrictions were only temporary measures, and would be lifted within 5 to 10 years.
Initially, the National Assembly met in the hall used by the smaller Standing Committee of the House of People's Representatives, which was expanded with more desks to fit all 278 members. Work on a new building began in 1993, and was completed in 1998. The new site is one block north of Heroes' Square, and faces the Donggwangsan from the other side of the vast Okchŏn Garden. In addition to the main assembly hall, it also contains a number of smaller conference rooms, a press and visitor balcony, and side booths for simultaneous interpretation staff.
The appointed seats were dutifully abolished in time for the 1999 election, with the remaining 78 proportionally distributed around the provinces. The limitation on parties, however, would remain in place for another 20 years. A new left-flank party, the Reorganized Menghean Communist Party, entered the race in 1999, but it was controlled by the United Front coalition and did not serve as a genuine opposition group. Indeed, after the Ummayan Civil War led to a sharp rupture in relations with Maverica and Innominada in 2005, the RMCP was dissolved over its leaders' connections with syndicalist movements in those countries. The vacated seats were temporarily filled by Socialist and Social-Democratic Party cadres in proportion to those parties' share in the rest of the legislature, a procedure not provided for in the Constitution.
A replacement left-flank party, the Menghean Labor Party, was added to the coalition in 2009, and some semblance of regularity returned to the National Assembly's elections. While it had tightly controlled the 1989 through 1999 elections, the MSP tolerated genuine competition between the pro-regime parties in 2009 and 2014, allowing MLP and MSDP candidates to hold stump speeches and print policy posters in the two weeks ahead of the election. These "semi-competitive" elections allowed the MSP to gauge its popularity without permitting actual opposition. Indeed, when the MSDP won an unprecedented 67 seats in 2014, leading Socialist Party cadres interpreted it as a sign that the population increasingly wished for more socially and economically liberal reforms.
Facing pressure from domestic and international pro-democracy groups, as well as the otherwise Menghe-friendly governments of Dayashina, Tír Glas, and Hallia, the Ministry of Civil Affairs permitted independent opposition candidates to run for the National Assembly in 2019. As a precondition for this change, outsiders were not allowed to form organized parties, and instead had to run together under an "Independents" label on the ballot. This functioned as a de facto open list: independents were given a share of seats proportional to the share of independent votes, and candidates on the list were ordered based on the number of signatures each one had gathered for their candidacy application three weeks prior. Despite the onerous registration and campaigning regulations and the last-minute nature of the announcement, independents were able to win 45 seats in the National Assembly, more than the two pro-regime flank parties combined. This was not enough to meaningfully contest the political process, as the UFNR still held 84% of the seats and could pass even landmark legislation without any independent votes. Nevertheless, it did serve as a watershed event in Menghe's political liberalization, breaking the MSP's 32-year monopoly on power and energizing the democratic opposition.
Role and functions
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In Menghe's unicameral system, the National Assembly is the sole house of the legislature. Most bills are conceived within the Supreme Council or its composite ministries, but the National Assembly is tasked with fleshing them out more completely, either through group debate or work in individual committees. This process increasingly involves a level of objective debate between delegates, but only within the overall discursive limits set by the ruling party.
Other major functions assigned to the National Assembly under Menghe's 1988 constitution include the following:
- Electing the Chairman, First Deputy Chairman, and two other Deputy Chairmen of the Supreme Council;
- Approving the appointment of Ministers, Provincial governors, and Ambassadors;
- Electing the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly;
- Approving the annual budget;
- Ratifying treaties with foreign countries, including the Septentrion League;
- Amending the constitution (requires a 2/3 majority)
Elections
Legislative elections in Menghe are held every five years. The election itself takes place in the third week of March, and legislators are sworn in on May 25th, otherwise known as National Day. All citizens above the Standard age of 19 are able to vote. In order to run for office, legislators must be at least 30 years old, also reckoned by Standard Age, and must have lived in Menghe for at least 25 years. The last legislative election took place in 2014, and the next one is scheduled for 2019.
Legislators are subject to direct election in single-seat districts, and the winner is decided on a first-past-the-post basis. The nomination process is controlled by the Directorate for Elections in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which requires that all nominees register with one of Menghe's three legally recognized political parties and subsequently narrows down the list of nominees from there. Write-in candidates are not recognized, and ballots marked with names not listed are counted as invalid.
During the 1990s, it was common for the New Communist Party and Social-Democratic Party to endorse the Socialist Party candidate, or vice versa in a select number of districts, so that each ballot only carried one name. In subsequent elections the Directorate for Elections loosened some of its restrictions, and in 1997 the National Assembly passed a law with Supreme Council approval mandating that all National Assembly districts run at least two candidates. It did not, however, mandate that these candidates come from different parties, and in subsequent elections the Directorate for Elections has ensured that the Menghean Socialist Party will win at least two-thirds of all districts.
Structure
Unlike legislative bodies in certain other Socialist countries in Septentrion, the National Assembly does not elect a separate presidium to perform its regular duties while it is not in session. Instead, the full 278-member body convenes on a regular basis throughout the year, allowing long-term debate and a more thorough drafting of laws.
Leadership
On the same day they take their oaths of office, legislators also elect a Speaker and Deputy Speaker for the National Assembly. These individuals hold the post for the remainder of that Assembly, and are subject to a two-term limit. The National Assembly also has the power to recall a Speaker and elect a new one. In practice, each Speaker elected after 1989 has served two consecutive terms without recall. The first three Speakers, Sŏ Do-wŏn, Ha Gi-ung, and Jŏng Myŏng-hyi, were selected ahead of time by the Supreme Council and ran unopposed, but in 2009 the National Assembly allowed a competitive internal election. All three nominees had already served two terms in the National Assembly, and were announced as candidates after the popular election results came in, giving elected legislators adequate time to weigh their options.
Relation to the Supreme Council
The National Assembly also votes on the upper membership of the Supreme Council, i.e. all members except the Ministers and the Chairman's Chief of Staff. These decisions are effectively laid out ahead of time by the Party leadership, and the "vote" itself consists of formally approving names presented to the assembly. Choe Sŭng-min has been subject to re-election as Chairman three times (1989, 1999, and 2009), and ran unopposed on all occasions. By custom, however, one of his Deputy Chairmen is simultaneously the Speaker of the National Assembly, and in 2009 Ri Hyo-jin was nominated and elected Deputy Chairman even though his victory as Speaker had been uncertain.
Committees
In order to handle specific areas of legislation in greater detail, the National Assembly contains a number of specialized committees organized around certain topics. Some committees are permanent, while others are formed on an ad-hoc basis to deal with a specific issue and later dissolved. All bills drafted by these committees are subject to vote in front of the entire body.
Power
Under Menghe's single-party system, the National Assembly has relatively little independent authority, and does not serve as a meaningful restraint on the power of the Supreme Council and its Chairman. In its 30-year history, it has never voted down a bill or other proposal backed by the support of the Supreme Council, though on a few occasions it has turned down measures promoted by legislators themselves. Constraints on the election and nomination process also ensure that at least two-thirds of all legislators are members of the Menghean Socialist Party, and even delegates from the competing parties face unofficial constraints on what they can and can't propose.
Nevertheless, from the Sixth Assembly onward, National Assemblies have been characterized by a steadily increasing degree of debate and contention. The minor coalition parties have also enjoyed more freedom to propose bills and set their own agendas. Signs of this trend were already visible in the late Fourth Assembly and the early Fifth, but the emergency move to disband the New Menghe Communist Party in 2005 led to a tightening of single-party control.
United Front for National Restoration
The 1988 constitution recognizes the Menghean Socialist Party as Menghe's "ultimate guiding authority," and grants it a privileged place in national decision-making. Within the National Assembly, the MSP governs with two coalition parties, the Menghean Social-Democratic Party (대멩 사회 민주당 / 大孟社會民主黨, Dae Meng Sahoe-minjudang) and the Menghean Workers' Party (대멩 로동당 / 大孟勞動黨, Dae Meng Rodongdang). Together, all three form the United Front for National Restoration (국가 유신 통일 전선 / 國家維新統一戰線, Gukka Yusin Tongil Jŏnsŏn), sometimes abbreviated as United Front.
The United Front is administered through a special liaison office within the Menghean Socialist Party, which oversees the other parties' platforms to ensure that they do not depart too radically from the MSP's own agenda. As such, the MSDP and MWP are not fully independent political parties, but rather serve as semi-autonomous wings of the MSP.
This relationship was demonstrated twice for the left-wing flank party, which was disbanded and reformed twice in its history. Established to appeal to former moderates within the Menghe People's Communist Party, it originally ran as the New Menghe Communist Party in the Second Assembly, gaining nine seats. Shortly before the 1994 elections, the party leadership was purged due to suspected sympathies with the ousted Ryo Ho-jun regime, and the Party was renamed the Reorganized Communist Party of Menghe. A second crisis came in April 2005, when the Reorganized Communist Party was disbanded on the grounds that its members were sympathetic to Maverican communism; its twenty-nine legislators were removed from their seats, and a special election in June brought in replacements from the MSP. After a thorough investigation and reshuffling of upper personnel, the organization was restored as the Menghe Workers' Party, which currently holds 22 seats in the National Assembly.
Though initially the smaller of the two, the Menghean Social-Democratic party has more recently emerged as a significant competitor with the Menghean Socialist Party, and has built up a substantial following among intellectuals and urban white-collar workers. Even so, it, too, is subject to indirect MSP control, and its General-Secretary has described the MSDP "not as a rival [of the Socialist Party], but as a partner organization which advocates for reform within the system."
List of National Assemblies
| Assembly | Session | Speaker | MSP seats | Notes on legislators |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 1988-1989 | Sŏ Do-wŏn | 197 (98.5%) | 200 legislators, all appointed by the outgoing Interim Council. |
| 2nd | 1989-1994 | Ha Gi-ung | 262 (94.2%) | 200 elected, plus 78 appointed by the Supreme Council and the Armed Forces. |
| 3rd | 1994-1999 | Ha Gi-ung | 243 (87.4%) | 200 elected, plus 78 appointed by the Supreme Council and the Armed Forces. |
| 4th | 1999-2004 | Jŏng Myŏng-hyi | 234 (84.2%) | 278, all elected (districts redrawn in 1998). |
| 5th | 2004-2009 | Jŏng Myŏng-hyi | 219 (78.8%) | 278, all elected; MSP gained 29 seats in a special election after the RCPM was disbanded. |
| 6th | 2009-2014 | Ri Hyo-jin | 210 (75.5%) | 278, all elected; Menghe Workers' Party added to coalition. |
| 7th | 2014-2019 | Ri Hyo-jin | 189 (67.9%) | 278, all elected. |