Politika
- We Have No Parliamentarism
- Will the Assembly Be Adjourned Again?
- MR. PRIBIĆEVIĆ AT MR. NINČIĆ'S
Politika's issue of 3 November 1926 is read here through three political items. In a signed column, Dragiša Lapčević argued that the country had a National Assembly in name only: it was not a real parliament, and since liberation and unification no cabinet had fallen in it or come out of it. A news item on rumours that the Assembly would be adjourned again quoted the prime minister's flat denial: he had heard the rumours too, but it would not happen. A third report covered Mr. Pribićević's meeting at Mr. Ninčić's. Among the topics was deputy Božović's interpellation to the foreign minister over Ceno Beg's appointment as envoy to the Belgrade court. The police had then summoned Božović at the minister's request, and the paper called this a violation of a deputy's immunity.
This partial reading covers three political items from the page. They were transcribed from the page images, with line-break hyphens joined, because the supplied OCR was too corrupted to give exact passages. The main situation story, the 'Шта се говори?' item and the Maribor storm report are cut off at the tile edges and were not selected. The first line of the Pribićević item is smudged.
Translation
We Have No Parliamentarism
However, as early as 1893 it begins to turn somewhat opportunist, and it leaves the parliamentary system of government to its Janus as well, while it itself, from then on, steadily draws closer to a system of government that has nothing in common with parliamentarism. Since liberation and unification we do, it is true, have an institution called the National Assembly, but it is not a parliament, nor does it exercise its parliamentary powers. This is best seen in the fact that, to this day, not a single cabinet has fallen in parliament, and not a single one has come out of parliament!
Will the Assembly Be Adjourned Again?
The Prime Minister replied: "I too hear those rumours, but I tell you: it will not happen."
MR. PRIBIĆEVIĆ AT MR. NINČIĆ'S
At this meeting there was also talk of the well-known interpellation on the violation of deputies' rights. As is known, this concerns the interpellation that Mr. Božović submitted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the appointment of Mr. Ceno Beg as envoy to our Court. Because of that interpellation, at the request of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the police summoned Mr. Božović to answer for it. In this way the immunity of a deputy of the people was violated.
Context
Uzunović's Radical government in autumn 1926
The prime minister who brushed aside the adjournment rumours was Nikola Uzunović of the People's Radical Party. He had taken office on 8 April 1926, after Nikola Pašić was forced to resign that same month amid corruption scandals. Uzunović then faced conflict inside his own party, and a series of short-lived governments came and went while he was in office. His premiership ended on 17 April 1927. Pašić, whose political career had spanned almost five decades, died on 10 December 1926, about five weeks after this issue. The Politika item records only the prime minister's flat denial. It does not say who was spreading the rumours, or what became of the Assembly's schedule. The rumours themselves point to an Assembly whose sittings depended on the government, a weakness close to the one Lapčević's column on the same page complained about.
Who Ceno Beg was, and why his appointment drew an interpellation
The "Ceno Beg" of the report is Ceno Kryeziu, also known as Ceno Bey Jakova. He came from the prominent Kryeziu family of Gjakova and was known as a man Yugoslav authorities trusted within Albanian politics. In 1922 he married Nafije, the sister of Ahmed Zogu. Zogu later exiled him to France, then called him back and made him envoy to Belgrade. Kryeziu presented his credentials in October 1926, only weeks before this issue. The appointment was contested. According to Ali Kelcyra's 1959 memoir, Historical Reminiscences, Albanian émigrés in Belgrade held Ceno Bey morally responsible for the murders of Bajram Curri and Luigj Gurakuqi. Politika does not say what Božović's interpellation argued. It reports only that the interpellation concerned the appointment and that the police summoned Božović at the foreign minister's request. It is the paper that calls this a violation of a deputy's immunity, and the item gives no outcome. The Pribićević of the headline is almost certainly the opposition leader Svetozar Pribićević. Under the 1929 royal dictatorship he was placed under house arrest and later went into exile in France.
Lapčević's verdict on parliament and the path to January 1929
Dragiša Lapčević, born in 1867, co-founded the Serbian Social Democratic Party (1903–1918) with Dimitrije Tucović. He sat in the Skupština from 1905 to 1908 and again from 1912 to 1919. In the early 1920s he left politics and withdrew from the workers' movement, so he wrote this column as an outsider to party politics. The excerpt starts in the middle of an argument and does not name the feminine "it" that turned opportunist. The year 1893 is significant, however. That year the 16-year-old King Alexander Obrenović declared himself of age, dismissed the regents and named the moderate Radical Lazar Dokić to form a government. Lapčević's test, that no cabinet had fallen in parliament or come out of it, points to a system in which governments were made and unmade outside the Assembly. Less than two years after the column, in June 1928, Croatian Peasant Party leader Stjepan Radić was assassinated in the Parliament. On 6 January 1929, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia abolished the Vidovdan Constitution, prorogued Parliament and assumed emergency powers. He then appointed a cabinet answerable only to himself and imposed tight press censorship. Lapčević's column of 1926 describes an Assembly that already had little say over cabinets. It does not foretell that later outcome.
Original
Ми немамо парламентаризма
Међутим, већ 1893 године она отпочиње бивати помало опортунистичка, па и парламентарни систем владавине оставља своме Јанусу, а сама се, од тада, стално приближава једном систему владавине, који ничега заједничкога нема с парламентаризмом. Од ослобођења и уједињења ми имамо, истина, једну установу која се назива Народном Скупштином, али она није парламенат нити упражњава своје парламентарне атрибуте. То се најбоље види по томе: што, до данас, ниједан кабинет није пао у парламенту, и ниједан није изишао из парламента!
Да ли ће се Скупштина поново одложити
Председник владе је на то одговорио: - И ја чујем за те гласове, али вам кажем: то неће бити.
Г. ПРИБИЋЕВИЋ КОД Г. НИНЧИЋА
На овом састанку било је речи и о познатој интерпелацији о повреди посланичких права. Као што је познато овде је реч о интерпелацији коју је г. Божовић поднео министру спољних послова о постављању г. Цена Бега за посланика на нашем Двору. Због те интерпелације на захтев министра спољних послова полиција је позвала г. Божовића на одговор. Тиме је повређен имунитет једног народног посланика.