The Free Mandate of the Members of Parliament in the Constitutional Development of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic
Abstract
This article deals with the issue of the matter of the mandate of members of parliament in the constitutional history of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Namely the article is dedicated to the problem, whether and when in the years 1918-2020 the mandate of the members of parliament was free or imperative.
The detailed description shows, that in Czechoslovakia strongly prevailed the imperative mandate, irrespective of character of the political regime. The pre-war Czechoslovak constitution adopted in 1920 expressly declared the mandate as a free one and members of parliament should use it regardless of any instructions or commands.
Nonetheless very quickly, in 1923, through the decision of the Election Court, the first deputies were deprived of their functions as a sanction for leaving their party policy. Thus, even in the democratic regime the mandate was transformed into the imperative form.
After the WWII, the political circumstances in Czechoslovakia changed and the regime turned into a totalitarian form under the hegemony of the communist party. In these circumstances the deputies should serve as servants of the voters, to follow their instructions and they could be recalled, if not fulfilling the will of the (working) people.
Nonetheless the recall system based on the public meetings of the voters was not very practical and it could fulfil the estimations only when the communist party has the situation fully under its control. In some critical moments other tools for recall had to be adopted, as it happened in the year 1969, when the political situation after the Prague Spring suppression needed to be consolidated and the will of the voters was different of the will of the conservative communist leaders.
The last recalls appeared after the Velvet Revolution when democracy was re-established in Czechoslovakia. Thus, the free parliamentary mandate existed hardly in 8 years from 75 years of existence of Czechoslovakia.
The last 30 years of its existence in the constitution of the Czech Republic and political practice is still quite an uncommon period in the Czechoslovak constitutional tradition.