Original scientific paper
THE CROATIAN STATE PARLIAMENT OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA (NDH) IN 1942
Nada Kisić Kolanović
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The Croatian State Parliament (Hrvatski državni sabor - HDS) was summoned in February 1942. From February, 23 to 28, there were 9 plenary sessions held. The Parliament was also summoned on the Annual session on 10th and 11th April 1942 and finally at the closing session on 28th December 1942. HDS acted as a single-dome assembly, while the head of the state determined the criteria for nominating its members. Among 143 members of HDS there were mostly Croatian members chosen at the 1938 elections, living members of the 1918 elections, members of the Croatian Party of Right (Hrvatska stranka prava), Ustasha officials, and members of the Croatian Peasants' Party who absented to a remarkable degree. Original documents do not leave any doubt that HDS in 1942 was in fact an outcome of the authoritarian system and not one of an electoral democracy. In the writing of the law theoretician E. Sladović we find arguments that the executive authorities of the NDH, the Head of the Stale and the Government, are independent in regard to the HDS. HDS had undergone considerable Constitutional restrictions. These restrictions were based on two legal articles coming from the Head of State Ante Pavelić who decided on the inner structure and Standing Orders of the HDS: Legal Regulations about the Croatian State Parliament from 24th February 1942 and Legal Regulations about the Standing Orders of the Croatian State Parliament from 20th February 1942. Original documents of Parliamentary committees point to a silent conflict of the Members of Parliament and the Government regarding inner matters, like economic and financial policies, voluntarism of the executive authorities towards the Orthodox and Jew community. The Government's policy towards Italy, which had threatened the Croatian ethnic corpus in Dalmatia and the Coastal Region, had undergone remarkable criticism.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
207218
URI
Publication date:
4.12.2000.
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