President of Meronnia
| President of Meronnia | |
|---|---|
| Président de la République | |
| Executive branch | |
| Style |
|
| Status | Head of State |
| Residence | Château Vieille |
| Seat | Senone, Meronnia |
| Nominator | At least 500 elected officials |
| Appointer | Direct popular vote (two-round) |
| Term length | 5 Years |
| Constituting instrument | Constitutional Amendment 1922 |
| Precursor | Meronnian Directory |
| Formation | 2nd October 1922 |
| Salary | L422,000 annually |
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The President of Meronnia is the head of state of Meronnia. The current President is Pierre-Antoine Tremblay, since 28 May 2014.
The President has both significant political and ceremonial responsibilities as the Head of State. The President is responsible for accrediting ambassadors and signing treaties, is the Commander in Chief of the Meronnian Armed Forces, makes a number of non-partisan appointments, along with many other responsibilities.
The President is elected to five year terms. Candidates may not be a member of a political party, and must be recommended by five hundred elected officials (including representatives to the Chamber of Deputies as well as to Communal legislatures) to be placed on the ballot. The President is directly elected by Meronnian voters in a two-round system.
History
The office of the President was created by the Constitutional Reforms of Pierre-Marie Jaubert in 1922. Prior to these reforms the Meronnian Directory was the collective Head of State and held many of the responsibilities the President does today. The introduction of the President was motivated both by a desire to eliminate the existence of a collective as the Head of State, as well as broad support for a directly elected office taking the status.
There has been little change to the roles and responsibilities of the President since its introduction.
Responsibilities
As Head of State, the President has many responsibilities in foreign affairs. The President appoints and accredits ambassadors and consuls and may do so with or without the advice of the government. The President also signs treaties on behalf of Meronnia and can elect not to do so, which gives the President an effective veto of treaties and international agreements ratified by the Chamber of Deputies. The confluence of both ceremonial and authoritative responsibilities in this area means that many Presidents have dominated foreign policy, though it has become more common over time for the Head of State to respect the priorities of the sitting government.
The President is also the ex officio Commander in Chief of the Meronnian Armed Forces. However, the oaths of the Armed Forces are to the Republic rather than directly to the President, and executive military decisions are only made by the President on the advice of the First Deputy and the Secretary of Defense.
Due to a long-running convention of attributing non-partisan appointments to the President in legislation, the office makes a number of appointments to civil service roles. Generally, this involves the related civil service agency preparing a short list of proposed candidates, from which the President selects. Positions appointed in this way include members of the Electoral Commission, the Oversight Office of the Committee of Finance, and most roles in the Public Advocacy Commission including the Inspector-General.
The President is not able to block the Chamber of Deputies from legislating, as the power to veto was never transferred from the Directory to the new office. However, the President may legally dissolve the Chamber and initiate new elections under certain circumstances, most prominently on the passage of a Vote of No Confidence - however the President is not compelled to dissolve the Chamber in the instance of such a vote passing and may instead allow a new coalition to form a government within the existing Chamber.
Overall, the President is a politically weak office, though one that can be leveraged into broad unofficial influence.
Elections
Every five years an election is held for the position of President. The most recent election was held in 2017, and the next will be in 2022.
The process begins with candidates, which may not be registered party members, being recommended by a list of at least 50 elected "endorsers" - Communal Maires or members of the Chamber of Deputies. Candidates that reach this threshold are compiled into a list, and often pre-election polling leads to the worst performing candidates removing themselves from the ballot. It is convention for political parties to avoid endorsing a candidate in President elections, though commonly elected officials of parties will group around ideologically similar candidates.
The first round of voting sees all enrolled voters vote for their preferred candidate. After the results are tallied, the top two candidates proceed to a second round of voting, where the winner is elected President. There is a theoretical constitutional bypass wherein a candidate who receives an absolute majority in the first round immediately wins the office, though this has never happened in practice.