Word: sejm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Finicky Westerners complained that Poland's democracy was superficial, Leftists bedazzled by propaganda about collective farms sympathized with its poor peasantry. But Poland had a record of social progress which, in terms of her initial difficulties, seemed as imposing as those of Europe's totalitarian States. Its Sejm, or Parliament, looked feeble compared to London or Washington. But it was Jeffersonian compared to the drilled and subservient Parliaments of Moscow, Rome and Berlin. Its foreign policy looked a little shifty, but it was clear as a brook compared with the secret diplomacy of Communist and Fascist States...
...task which the mad whims of geography, history and Adolf Hitler thrust upon him last week, Marshal Smigly-Rydz had an able and unpronounceable panel of generals and colonels. Also behind him was Poland's Parliament, 96 businessmen, professors, writers in the Senate, 208 bureaucrats in the Sejm, 304 yes-men chosen from a maze of political parties by a rigged system of electoral committees. This parliamentary front was assembled last week to enact emergency war measures...
Some measure of free speech exists in Poland and most of the time the Government tolerates an opposition press. The right of assembly cannot be said to be denied. All Poles over 24 vote for the Sejm, lower house of Parliament, and, most paradoxical for a semi-dictatorship, there are cities in Poland which have Socialist mayors and councils...
...national elections to the Polish Sejm are run uniquely. The candidates are limited to those favored by the oligarchy of Polish rulers who control the landowning, manufacturing, cultural and military groups that do the nominating. The Government never has to worry much about its majority in the Sejm. Nor does it have to report some of its most important decisions to the "people's representatives." Colonel Beck once a year makes a "courtesy" speech on foreign affairs before Parliament, but he is careful not to give away any secrets to listening foreign diplomats...
...Article XII with the ordinary powers of a European president whose acts must be countersigned like those of a king by the appropriate minister, but further endowed by Article XIII with what the new Constitution calls "prerogatives," these requiring no countersignature. At his autocratic pleasure he can dissolve the Sejm and Senate and can dismiss the Premier, First President of the Supreme Court, President of the Supreme Chamber of Control, and the Commander-in-Chief and Inspector General of Poland's armed forces by land, sea and air. Moreover the President orders Polish general elections and nominates...