Constitution for new NS country

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Revision as of 04:35, 17 January 2010

Article 147. Each of the chambers has the following powers, without intervention by the other:

1) To elect its own officers;

2) To appoint and remove its employees;

3) To regulate the order of its meetings and all matters concerning its internal organization;

4) To organize its secretariat and the offices under its authority in accordance with the corresponding regulations;

5) To sanction its expenditures;

6) To arrange its economy and internal policing;

7) To enforce attendance by its members;

8) To invite the other chamber to take part in joint debate;

9) To appoint, in accordance with regulations, committees to represent it in official acts;

10) To reprimand or remove, by a two-thirds majority vote, any of its members because of misconduct in the performance of duty, incapacity, or physical or mental disability, duly substantiated. In cases of resignation, it shall decide by a simple majority vote; and

11) To grant retirement and superannuation pensions and gratuities to its employees or to their relatives, in conformity with the law.

Article 148. Congress in separate session has the following powers:

1) To enact and order the publication of the codes;

2) To enact laws relating to the independence, security, tranquility, and decorum of the Republic; the protection of all individual rights and the fostering of public works, social welfare, public health, public education, agriculture, labor, finances and economy, industry, and domestic and foreign trade;

3) To interpret, amend, and repeal existing laws;

4) To establish tribunals and regulate the administration of justice and of contentious-administrative matters;

5) To create and abolish public posts and assign to them the proper emoluments, with the exception of those whose creation or abolition devolves on other bodies according to the law;

6) To examine infractions of the Constitution and do what is necessary in order to make effective the responsibility of those who infringe it;

7) To pass political judgment on the conduct of the Ministers of State, in accordance with the provisions of Section VIII;

8) To enact the electoral law;

9) To impose the necessary taxes to meet budgetary expenditures, provide for their distribution, collection and appropriation, and to repeal, modify, or increase those in existence;

10) To approve each year the estimate of receipts and in the same law to fix the expenditures of the public administration.

Congress cannot approve any new expenditure chargeable to the funds of the Nation without at the same time creating or indicating the sources of revenue necessary to provide for this expenditure;

11) To recognize the national debt and indicate the means for its consolidation and amortization;

12) To establish the weight, standard and value of monies; to fix the rates and denominations thereof; and to provide a system of weights and measures;

13) To authorize the establishment of banks of issue;

14) To approve or reject the treaties, conventions, concordats, and other international agreements signed on behalf of the Republic, and to authorize the executive power to declare war and conclude peace;

15) To permit or prohibit the entry of foreign troops into the territory of the Republic, and in the former case, to fix the time when they must depart;

16) To refuse or permit the expedition of national forces outside the Republic, in the latter case fixing the time for their return to the country;

17) To effect the demarcation and division of the national territory;

18) To establish the legal rules governing the transfer and lease of fiscal and municipal assets;

19) To change, under extraordinary circumstances on serious grounds of public necessity, the seat of any or all government organs;

20) To regulate river and air navigation;

21) To open and close ports and establish maritime and inland customhouses;

22) To grant amnesties and pardons for political offenses and common offenses related thereto.

In no case may pardons include civil liabilities toward private individuals;

23) To exercise any other powers that are within its competence according to this Constitution.

Article 149. At the initiative of the executive branch, Congress in separate session also has the following powers:

1) To authorize awards, indemnities, pensions, prizes, and honors, without prejudice to the authority that the President of the Republic holds as chief of the armed forces;

2) To authorize, for specific periods of time, concessions for the establishment of new industries or national public services, as well as for the extraction and transformation of raw materials;

3) To issue military ordinances and enact the organic law of the military courts;

4) To grant permission to the president of the republic to leave the country;

5) To authorize the executive power to negotiate loans pledging the national treasury and indicating funds for their amortization.

Article 150. Congress in joint session has the following powers:

1) To elect its own board of officers, which shall consist of a president, a vice president, and two secretaries, with corresponding vice secretaries;

2) To regulate the order of business of its meetings and all matters concerning its internal organization;

3) To declare the President of the Republic elected, in accordance with the electoral law, and to receive his constitutional oath of office;

4) To accept or reject the resignation from his post of the President of the Republic;

5) To declare vacant the Presidency of the Republic in the cases which the Constitution indicates;

6) To take cognizance of a veto by the executive branch;

7) To declare and specify the duration of a state of economic emergency whenever abnormal circumstances of the country so demand.

Such a declaration of emergency shall suspend, if so ordered, any or all guarantees set forth in Article 65.

The laws enacted by the legislative branch on the basis of this declaration or during its recess by the executive branch may not be in force to the detriment of stated constitutional guarantees longer than the time fixed by the corresponding decree;

8) To take cognizance of the decree-laws issued by the executive branch in the event of emergency or public necessity;

9) To legalize the extraordinary or supplementary credits authorized by the President of the Republic in Council of Ministers;

10) To take cognizance of the report presented by the executive branch on measures taken during the suspension of constitutional guarantees;

11) To grant to illustrious _______ans who have rendered eminent services to the Republic, the honors of the National Pantheon, when twenty-five years have elapsed since their death;

12) To establish, by a three-fourths vote, the national coat of arms, the flag of the republic, and the national anthem;

13) To exercise such other functions and powers that this Constitution and the laws may give it.