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, pr. 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
In Menghe's unicameral system, the National Assembly is the sole house of the legislature. Most bills are conceived within the Supreme Council and written by bureaucrats in its composite ministries, but the National Assembly is charged with voting to pass them into law. Other major functions assigned to the National Assembly under Menghe's 1989 constitution include the following:
- Selecting the Chairman of the Supreme Council;
- Approving the appointment of Ministers, Provincial governors, Supreme Court judges, 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, with a two-thirds majority.
Most international analysts consider the National Assembly a form of rubber stamp body, with little independent power to restrain the upper leadership; most decisions pass with an overwhelming majority of the vote. This was particularly true under the pre-2019 election system, which ensured that all seats were held by members of the ruling Menghean Socialist Party or its coalition allies.
Even so, in recent decades the National Assembly has developed into a somewhat meaningful center of debate, even if the terms of the debate are curtailed. Though the National Assembly has never voted down a bill endorsed by the Supreme Council, opposing vote shares of 20 to 30 percent provide a signal that a bill is unpopular, and on occasion have led the Supreme Council to retract and revise it or to authorize amendments. Particularly since 2015, the Supreme Council has periodically allowed the National Assembly to hold genuinely contested votes on non-critical policy issues, as a way of testing the waters of elite opinion.
Elections
Elections to the National Assembly are held every five years, with the most recent election taking place on July 14th, 2019. Voters cast ballots in a party list system, placing a stamp next to the name of their preferred party. The three regime-sanctioned parties - the MSP, MSDP, and MLP - each draft a ranked list of National Assembly candidates for each province, and these lists are displayed on the walls of the polling station. These are closed lists: there is no option for a voter to indicate on the ballot what his or her preferred ordering of candidates would be. Write-in candidates are not recognized, and ballots marked with names not listed are counted as invalid. There are also no term limits, though candidates over the Standard Age of 75 cannot appear on the ballot.
Each of Menghe's provinces and province-level entities is given a number of seats proportional to its share of the national population, with an average of 1.8 million residents per seat in 2019. Within each province, these seats are divided between the competing parties so that the share of each party's seats is as close as possible to the share of its votes. Parties fill these seats using their ranked lists: if the MSDP won 3 seats in North Donghae Province, for example, it would award seats to the first, second, and third candidates on its ranked list. The election winners are sworn in on August 1st, two weeks after the election; this date coincides with the anniversary of the founding of the Federative Republic of Menghe, and falls on a national holiday week.
If a sitting Representative is arrested, resigns, or dies in office, the next-ranking candidate on his or her Party list from that province is called forward as a replacement, and serves out the remainder of the departing Representative's term. When the Reorganized Menghean Communist Party was dissolved in 2005, the Supreme Council allowed the MSP and MSDP to fill the vacated seats in proportion to their prior vote share, as though the 2004 ballots had been re-counted with the RMCP ballots marked as invalid. The 1989 Constitution does not make any mention of such a solution, though the Supreme Court upheld the decision, likely at the request of the Supreme Council.
Menghe's 1989 Constitution does state that the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Menghe may dissolve the National Assembly and promptly call a special election for all seats. The following election would take place in the year for which it was originally scheduled. During his time as Chairman, Choe Sŭng-min has never invoked this power, as the UFNR has remained supportive of his policy proposals throughout his time in office.
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 session, 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 with no clear central preference.
The Speaker is tasked with setting the agenda for the Assembly, and maintaining order in the body more generally. Otherwise, his power is limited. Foreign-language material sometimes refers to the Speaker as Menghe's "Prime Minister," but this is misleading, as the Speaker does not appoint other Ministers and must defer to the Chairman of the Supreme Council in all substantive policy matters. The Speaker also has limited authority as a Party Whip; Socialist Party members ultimately defer to the guidance of the General Secretary, and since 1993 Choe Sŭng-min has held this post concurrently.
Election of the Chairman of the Supreme Council
The National Assembly is also responsible for electing the Chairman of the Supreme Council. On the first day of each session, shortly after his election, the Speaker calls a vote on whether the incumbent Chairman should be subjected to a recall election. If the recall vote succeeds, the National Assembly forms a Selectorate Committee to review applicants for the position. After narrowing down the list, the Selectorate Committee then presents the candidates for election by the Supreme Council in a two-stage runoff vote requiring a 140-vote majority in the second stage.
Since its first session in 1989, the National Assembly has never formed a Selectorate Committee. Choe Sŭng-min was already the incumbent Chairman when the first National Assembly met, having inherited the position from the dissolved Supreme Council for National Restoration, and he has won every recall election. To further limit the challenge to Choe's power, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party - since 1993, Choe himself - has insisted that the Speaker of the National Assembly conduct the recall vote by acclamation, with "aye" signaling the Chairman's continuation in office. As such, no official tally on the share of nay votes exist, and the "confidence vote" serves largely as a ceremonial affair.
Once in power, the Chairman of the Supreme Council nominates the other members of the Supreme Council, including the Ministry heads and his Chief of Staff. The Speaker of the National Assembly also sits on the Supreme Council by default. All of these appointments must be confirmed by the National Assembly, though the Assembly has no influence over who is nominated. A similar nomination-confirmation procedure applies to Supreme Court judges, ambassadors, and other high-ranking appointments made by the Chairman of the Supreme Council.
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.
Many individual Representatives choose to specialize in a given policy area over time, as opposed to focusing on the interests of their single-member district. The various Parties all account for committee specialization when drafting their candidate lists, and in the absence of term limits, many individual politicians gain a reputation for focusing on a given policy area. These "working small groups" conduct much of their work outside of regular National Assembly hours, either at the Socialist Party's headquarters or at the relevant ministry, where they can solicit input from unelected policy experts. This procedure ensures that most National Assembly legislation closely reflects the interests of the relevant ministries and the ruling Socialist Party.
Voting
At the Speaker's discretion, and with a few procedural exceptions, the National Assembly may either vote by acclamation or by an electronic roll call vote.
In an acclamation vote, supporters of the resolution first call "yea" (가/可, ga), and then "nay" (부/否, bu), and the Speaker determines which vote is loudest. If the yea vote is loud enough, the Speaker may judge that a majority has already been reached, and decline to hold a "nay" vote. This latter option is used in particularly sensitive votes, like the re-election of the Chairman of the Supreme Council, where any public record of "nay" votes could stir controversy.
In an electronic roll call vote, representatives may press one of three buttons on the desk in front of them, signaling yes, no, and abstention. The results are displayed on screens to either side of the central podium, and on individual screens on representatives' desks, signaling the total tally as well as each individual representative's decision. The electronic voting system was added with the opening of the new National Assembly building in 1998, and computers at individual desks were added during renovations in 2010. It allows the Speaker to record individual legislators' decisions without the need for a lengthy voice roll call of all 278 members, a useful tool for granting public transparency and enforcing Party discipline.
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 1989 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 Labor 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 UFNR.
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 forcefully for the MLP and its precursors. No Communist flank parties were allowed to run in the 1989 and 1994 elections, due to fears that former loyalists of the ousted Menghean People's Communist Party would attempt a resurgence. The Reorganized Menghean People's Communist Party was allowed to run in the 1999 and 2004 elections, but less than a year after the latter, it was forcibly dissolved and its top members arrested on accusations that they had maintained connections with Syndicalist labor organizations in Maverica and Innominada. The Menghean Labor Party, which ran as its replacement in 2009, has been much more restrained in its competition with the ruling MSP, its leaders carefully avoiding any favorable allusions to Syndicalism and the Ryŏ Ho-jun period.
Though initially the smaller of the two, the Menghean Social-Democratic Party grew in support over time, winning 67 seats (24% of the vote) in the 2014 elections. Its support ran highest among intellectuals and white-collar workers, and by 2014 it had built up a considerable support base in the south. Because of its more socially liberal stances and support for equity over growth, independent analysts considered it a form of protest vote for liberal reformists critical of the authoritarian MSP. This dynamic came fully into view with the 2019 elections, where the MSP lost nearly two-thirds of its seats as its former supporters defected in large numbers to the independent opposition.
List of National Assemblies
| Session | Period | Speaker | MSP seats | Notes on legislators |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 1989-1994 | Ha Gi-ung | 262 (94.2%) | 200 elected, plus 78 appointed by the Supreme Council and the Armed Forces. |
| 2nd | 1994-1999 | Ha Gi-ung | 243 (87.4%) | 200 elected, plus 78 appointed by the Supreme Council and the Armed Forces. |
| 3rd | 1999-2004 | Jŏng Myŏng-hyi | 234 (84.2%) | 278, all elected (districts redrawn in 1998). |
| 4th | 2004-2009 | Jŏng Myŏng-hyi | 219 (78.8%) | RCPM seats dissolved and redistributed in 2005. |
| 5th | 2009-2014 | Ri Hyo-jin | 210 (75.5%) | Menghean Labor Party added to coalition in 2009. |
| 6th | 2014-2019 | Ri Hyo-jin | 189 (67.9%) | Lowest seat share for the MSP since 1989. |
| 7th | 2019- | Gam Jun-chŏl | 191 (68.7%) | 278, all elected. First election in which Independent Opposition party list appeared. |