Word: parliament
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...week there were elections of a sort in Czechoslovakia. But they had been arranged by the only four parties permitted to function. They were conducted at party meetings. The vote was by public acclamation; the purpose was to choose electors who in turn would choose members of a Provisional Parliament. The seats in this Parliament had already been allotted by the controlling parties...
...basis of this balloting, the Socialists and Communists claimed 72% of the electorate's support. That claim would be proved, or disproved, only when Czechoslovaks got the secret, direct elections which the Provisional Parliament was commissioned to prepare. In American eyes this was neither freedom nor the promise of freedom. But Americans had not shared-they could hardly imagine-the Czech experience in the occupation years. In Czechoslovakia, as in all Europe, men in 1945 accepted or even welcomed measures which they would have abhorred in the democratic past...
...House of Commons, the Tories were full of fight. The "Young Tory" reformers, none too effective in their Party's heyday, would be alert for any chance to prove that rightist reason could match leftist ardor. But Prime Minister Clement Attlee, confronting his first Parliament, would keep a closer eye on the leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, ex-Prime Minister Winston Churchill...
...came up in their talk: universal suffrage, proportional representation, free economy, free trade. Old Ichiro Hatoyama, leader of the rising Liberal Party, talked soberly of strengthening the Diet and weakening the Army and Navy. The forms and manners of party rule were not new to the Japs, whose Diet (Parliament) is 55 years old. But the feel and substance of freedom were entirely new. The plain people, worried about food and work and shelter, had little time for minshu shugi (democracy) as the Americans understood...
They could do no more, on any question, than applaud and advise. The assembly had no final powers; it was only the first step toward a real Parliament. But Italians took heart. In louder, firmer tones than he had mustered at his inaugural address, Premier Ferruccio Parri wound up the session with a backpat for the "high degree of maturity shown . . . in this first trial run in democratic representation." A scheme of electoral law would be put before the assembly within the month; free elections and a constituent assembly were one step nearer...