Lietuvos Respublikos prezidento statuso ir įgaliojimų tobulinimo galimybės parlamentinėje valdymo formoje

Abstract

Lithuanian specialists of politics and law sciences define the governing of Lithuania as semipresidential. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania stated that “in line with the competence of state institutions stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, the governing model of Lithuania is attributable to parliamentary republic governing form” and furthermore added, that “some of the peculiarities of the socalled mixed (semi-presidential) form of governing were inherent to the governing form of Lithuania.” The article states that regarding the semi-presidential governing model of Lithuania the possibility for a conflict of state powers exists. The directly elected president of the Republic of Lithuania is granted authority to pursue his “program objectives” by the electorate, and it is likely that a situation can arise when the individual provisions of the government program of the parliamentary majority and those of the program of the president (direct obligations to the electors) may differ or even conflict. As Giovanni Sartori, a famous Italian political scientist tested such a form of state powers relations may be called “divided power” and may be separated from the concept of “division and separation of powers.”It also is stated in the article that the system of state powers of Lithuania is not to be treated as a normal parliamentary system. According to Sartori, it is possible to envisage some features of assemblerism in Lithuanian parliamentarianism: “powers are not united, but scattered and atomized”, “responsibility melts away altogether”, “party discipline varies from poor to entirely non-existent”, “prime ministers and their cabinets are unable to act quickly and decisively”, “coalitions rarely resolve their disagreements”, and “governments can never act and speak in one clear voice.”It is stated in the article that the constitutions of France and Germany provide for the presidents the integrating function as well as the political reserve function. When having the possibility to join the political process only as a reserve figure, the president cannot hinder the work of the parliamentary government. Thus the “divided situation” is prevented and the unity of the policy pursued by the authorities is ensured. On the other hand the article stresses that the president of France has the authorities for regulatory supervision of the activity of the parliamentary majority government. It is the right to dissolve the parliament when the president deems advisable. It can be stated that the president’s right to dissolve the parliament is a constitutional means available to the President to ensure political responsibility to the electors’ activities of the entire parliament and the government of the parliamentary majority and to avoid assemblerism.The conclusion is drawn that without the authorization of the president of Lithuania to perform the functions of the political and legal reserve (e. g. the right to dissolve the Seimas in cases where the latter due to its imprudence loses the trust of electors) the structure of “divided power” and of “assemblerism” in the activities of the state’s authorities can not be supplanted.