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To convene parliament or not, that is the question

15 May 2012 / 19:05:57  GRReporter
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Should a parliamentary session be convened or should the parliament be dismissed before holding even a single meeting? This is the case of concern of Greek constitutional law experts. Some of them suggest that it should not be convened in order for the second elections to take place as soon as possible. They emphasize that the implementation of the formal procedure would be a mistake and would postpone the elections until 17 June at least.

Furthermore, they believe that some subsequent constitutional issues could be avoided in this way. One of them is the prescription of criminal actions that may have been committed by the political staff before 6 May. This is due to the fact that, those who will support this measure will have the right to claim that convening the parliament for even a day is a parliamentary session and will be protected by the law applicable to date. According to some commentators, it will not be possible to investigate the actions of the previous cabinet and the introduction of Greece under the supervision of the supervisory Troika.

On the other hand, many problems must be overcome in order to not convene the parliament. One of them is the presidential decree issued on 11 April that regulated the dismissal of the old parliament, the elections on 6 May and the convening of the new parliament on 17 May. According to experts supporting the acceleration of the procedure, a new presidential decree could remove this obstacle. It could be issued today or tomorrow. The conclusion in the text that it was impossible to form a government could be followed by a provision stipulating the dismissal of parliament before even meeting and the announcement of new elections, along with the appointment of any of the three magistrates of caretaker prime minister.

The main argument of the specific proposal is that the strict rules of parliament could thus be avoided. According to it, if a meeting is convened on Thursday, which is very likely, the president of parliament and his deputies should be elected on Friday. Therefore, the announcement of its dismissal might not be possible before Saturday. In this case, the election date will be 17 June because the announcement of nominations and other election procedures require a minimum of 25 days.

However, the minority of experts on constitutional law support the proposal for not convening the parliament. The majority of them believe that legally and logically, a body that was not formed can not be dismissed. They believe that such a decision will offend not only the presidential decree, but also Article 37 of the Constitution, which stipulates the compulsory dismissal of parliament before elections.

Given that the new elections will take place a little more than a month after the elections on 6 May, they will be held with a party list. This means that voters will not tick off their preferred candidate on the ballot but will simply vote for the party. Party leaderships will draw up the lists and candidates from the front lines will be elected deputies. Analysts are commenting that this would cause serious disputes among them, as those who were elected with the vote held nine days ago would want to be at the top of the lists.

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