Constitution of Serbia
The Constitution of the Principality of Serbia from 1869 (also known as the Regency Constitution) was the third constitution of Serbia that replaced the old Turkish constitution from 1838. It was adopted by the Great National Assembly on July 11, 1869, and the constitution was in force in two periods: 1869–1888 and 1894–1901. The most important provisions of the Constitution from 1869 are devoted to the position and competences of the National Assembly, which, for the first time in the history of Serbian state law, became a legislative body.
The adoption of this constitution, even though Serbia was not yet a sovereign country, was not opposed by the Ottoman Empire, nominal sovereign of Serbia, nor by the great powers. Since it was adopted by the Regency when Мilan Obrenović was a minor, it is also called the Regency Constitution.
Background.
In the period 1839–1869, which represents the period of formal rule of the Turkish Constitution, two fundamentally different constitutional orders were replaced. The first was the period of the rule of the Defenders of the Constitution, during which the organization of the supreme state authority as well as the arrangement of broader, primarily social and economic relations, were in truth established on the principles of the Turkish Constitution. The second period coincides with the period of the second rule of Prince Mihailo Obrenović and is marked by important changes in the constitutional system in Serbia.
After the abdication of Мiloš Obrenović and the first ascension to the throne of his son Mihailo, the position of the defender of the constitution strengthened considerably. Their most prominent representatives from the ranks of merchant class and high aristocracy– Toma Vučić Perišić, Аvram Petronijević, Ilija Garašanin, Simić brothers–fought, primarily, for the preservation of freedoms recognized by the constitution in economic relations and especially for free trade.
Vučić's rebellion of 1842 resulted in the overthrow of the Obrenović dynasty and, on September 1, 1842, the election of Alexander Karađorđević as the new Prince of Serbia.
However, constant conflicts between the prince and the Council led to the convening of the Saint Andrew's Day Assembly in December 1858, where Miloš Obrenović was restored to the throne in place of the deposed Alexander Karađorđević.
The change in the Constitution from 1838, the inheritance of the princely dignity, and the emigration of the Turkish population from the cities, are the basic characteristics of Miloš's political program after his accession to the throne of Serbia. But less than two years, which was the duration of Miloš's second reign, were not enough for the prince to resolve these issues. After Miloš's death, the title of prince is again inherited by Mihailo, whose plan was to strengthen his position in power through reforms and thereby prevent the influence of opposition groups and the interference of the Porte. By creating a national army and forging alliances with Christian nations in the Balkans, he aimed for the final overthrow of Turkish power in this part of Europe.
With the second government of Prince Mihailo, Serbia enters a new chapter of its constitutional life. The question of changing the Turkish constitution was the most significant in the legislative activity of the new prince. In his proclamation upon ascension to the throne, he declares that "the law is the highest will in Serbia". Nikola Hristić writes about this in his memoirs:{
The Porte did not agree to Serbia's independent adoption of the constitution, and because of this, Prince Mihailo, at the persuasion of the great powers, passed laws that changed the legal position of the supreme authorities provided for in the Turkish Constitution.
The laws by which Prince Mihailo changed the provisions of the Constitution of 1838 to the greatest extent were as follows:
The structure of the State Council dated August 17, 1861, by which the advisers were placed in the same order as other officials, which enabled the prince to retire the independent advisers until then;
The reign of Prince Alexander Karađorđević was marked by frequent conflicts between the prince and the Soviet (State Council). After in 1857, Prince Alexander dismissed the Soviet (State Council) without the approval of the Porte. The Soviet complained about it, and after Etem Pasha's mission, the prince was forced to retract his decisions. The powers of the prince in terms of appointing and replacing councilors were reduced in comparison to his earlier powers by the changes to the organization of the Soviet from May 1858. After the Saint Andrew's Day Assembly at the end of 1858 and the return of Miloš Obrenović to power, the Soviet began to lose power.
Organization of the Central State Administration in the Principality of Serbia from March 12, 1862, which increased the number of ministries to seven (three new ministries were formed: education, construction, and military), and the ministers were completely separated from the council and subordinated only to the prince. The same law introduced the Council of Ministers for the first time, which had the task of uniting ministries in deciding on legal projects in other matters of importance for the entire country;
The Law on the National Assembly dated August 17, 1861. which introduces the difference between a grand and an ordinary assembly (the grand assembly is four times larger than the ordinary assembly in terms of the number of deputies and meets for the purpose of electing the prince, approving the adoption of the heir to the throne, or determining the regency during the time prince is under age). According to this law, the Assembly is an exclusively advisory body that has the right to be heard in certain cases.
The following laws were also significant:
"Law on civil servants of March 24, 1861 (later replaced by the law" of February 15, 1864);
"Law on the Organization of Municipalities and Municipal Authorities" of March 24, 1866;
Organization of the state military from August 1861.
While Prince Mihailo Obrenović was establishing absolutism in the country, a conspiracy was formed against him with the aim of killing him. The conspirators assassinated the prince on May 29, 1868 in Košutnjak, not far from the Hajduk fountain. Prince Mihailo had no legitimate children. The throne remained vacant, and the election of the ruler was the responsibility of the National Assembly. Before its convening, the day after the Topčider assassination, the Minister of War, Milivoje Petrović Blaznavac, with the help of the army in a coup d'état, declared Milan Obrenović (1854–1901), the fourteen-year-old grandson of Miloš's brother Jevrem, as the new prince. The only thing left for the National Assembly was to appoint a new ruler, who returned from Paris, where he had been studying, in June 1868. Under heavy pressure and surrounded by the army, the Great National Assembly met on July 2, 1868, where it proclaimed a minor, Milan Obrenović as a prince and elected Regents. That assembly demanded radical reforms, i.e., it asked for the extension of parliamentary power, the introduction of accountability for ministers, freedom of the press, and trial by jury. Upon coming to power, the Regents cautiously promised political reforms that would strengthen the influence of the National Assembly. The former opposition and public opinion were in favor of the reform, and only the conservatives opposed the political reforms.
Regency.
The underage prince was assigned a regency, which included Milivoje Petrović Blaznavac, Jovan Ristić and Jovan Gavrilović. Ristić, a capable official and diplomat, soon stood out as a leading figure among the Regents. Under his influence, changes occurred in the internal politics of the country, which marked a moderate liberalization of the political situation. The Regency reached a political compromise on this with the liberals, who transitioned from being persecuted opponents of the government during Mihailo's time to now becoming part of it. They agreed to moderate some of their reform demands (parliamentarism modeled on Western democracies, strong local self-government, freedom of the press and assembly, etc.) in exchange for breaking with the previous absolutism and gradually introducing political freedoms. The Regency, as the most important act during its mandate, adopted a new constitution.
Nicholas Committee.
A few months after the assassination, the Regency began drafting a new constitution. They raised the issue of the constitution against the provisions of the National Assembly Act of 1861, which prohibited changes to the constitution while the prince was underage. They did this because they considered that the existing status of the constitution, with the Turkish Constitution and the changes made by Prince Mihailo's constitutional legislation, was unsustainable. For this purpose, in December 1868, on Saint Nicholas Day, the Constitutional Committee, which was called the Nicholas Committee, was convened, consisting of over seventy people. The work of this committee, which gathered 76 members and whose president and deputy were Prime Minister Đorđe Cenić and Minister of Internal Affairs Radivoje Milojković, concluded on December 19.
In fact, the committee's task was to answer the question of whether it was necessary and whether it was time to give the country a constitution. With an affirmative answer (everyone agreed except Jovan Ilić) to that question, the committee considered the following questions of a constitutional nature: whether the national representation will be unicameral or bicameral; whether ministers should be held accountable for their work and how; should freedom of the press be allowed? The Regency advocated that the National Assembly, which until then had only an advisory role, be recognized as a legislative authority, but they demanded that the Council not be abolished, thus creating a bicameral system exist. The issue was also how to arrange the legislative power, and the Nicholas Committee was in favor of a bicameral system, but between the Regency and the committee there were disagreements regarding the organization of the upper house, i.e. Council.
The Regency proposed that the Council members be chosen by the government, but the committee opposed it, considering that these advisers would be dependent on the government. In particular, Aćim Čumić, Milan Piroćanac and Đorđe Pavlović opposed that proposal of appointed Council members. Čumić pointed out that if the council is to be the authority in charge of supervising the government, then it must be independent from the government. He also believed that councilors should be independent from the people in such a way that they would be elected for life. The liberals were afraid of Čumić's vision of the council, believing that it could grow into an oligarchy, so they asked for councilors with a temporary mandate, elected by the people. The Regency raised the issue of ministerial accountability and the issue of freedom of the press to the Nicholas Committee, and they almost agreed on that, but they believed that the freedom of the press should not be left without restrictions and also that the accountability of ministers should be limited to some extent so that they would not be constantly afraid of lawsuits. The draft of the constitution itself was drawn up after the meeting of the Nicholas Committee in a small circle of several members of the government and Regency, among whom Ristić was the most active. The Constitution was adopted at the Great National Assembly that convened in Kragujevac from June 10 to June 29, 1869. This longest-lasting Serbian constitution of the 19th century was also the first constitution that Serbia adopted independently.
Diplomatic interference and Regencies highhandedness.
Since the Regency and the Nicholas Committee were in favor of changing the constitution, a diplomatic effort was also needed since the Ottoman Empire considered that the Serbian constitution was within its rights. At the time, Serbia had the Turkish constitution from 1838. The Regency first convinced Austria and Russia that a change in the constitution was needed in order to put the Ottomans in front of a fait accompli. There was also an obstacle in the Serbian legislation itself because the Assembly Law stated that no constitutional change could be proposed during the Regency. That law was supposed to prevent the Regency from expanding their power during the time that the prince was underage. The Regency then explained in the newspaper that such an article of the law could be changed by ordinary legislative procedure, but they did not carry out that change until the adoption of the Regency Constitution in 1869, which later caused claims that the Regency Constitution was adopted in an irregular manner. The Constitution was supposed to be adopted by the council, and in that process the Assembly was only supposed to be heard, but that did not work for