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Politics in Greece
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Greece |
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The 1995, Constitution describes Greece as a “presidential parliamentary republic”. It does give extensive and specific guarantees of civil liberties and gives the powers to the head of state in a President elected by parliament. The term of a Greek President is 5 years unlike the United States where we only have a 4 year term. The way the Greek government is set up is like many Western democracies. It has also been compared as a compromise between the French and the German models. The Prime Minister of Greece and a cabinet of others play a very key role in the political process and the President does executive and legislative functions and ceremonial duties as well.
In the Greek government the Prime Minister is the head of the government and the executive power is performed by the government. The legislative power is out upon both the government and the Hellenic Parliament. The Judiciary power is strictly an independent power away from the executive and the legislative. There are three supreme e Courts the Court of Cassation, the Council of State and the Court of Auditors. The judiciary system is the make up of civil courts in which judge the civil and the criminal cases and the administrative courts which also judge administrative cases which are mainly disputes between the citizens and the States.
Greece does elect a legislature by universal suffrage. Meaning the right to vote in elections in Greece is 18 and over. The Hellenic Parliament has about 300 members and they are elected to a 4 year term. On March 7, 2004, Kostas Karamanlis, president of the New Democracy part and the nephew of the late Constantine Karamnalis was elected as the new Prime Minister. This win marked the political party’s first electoral victory in over 10 years. Karamanlis took over the government by former Prime Minister Kostas Simitis of PASOK party who had taken office in 1996.
Following the current electoral system that Greece has in place, a political party needs 3 percent threshold in the popular vote in order to get into Parliament. In the last Parliament elections in 2004, 4 parties entered the parliament, the New Democracy, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, the Communist Party and the Coalition of the Left of Movement and Ecology. The two major political parties in Greece are the New Democracy and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement. Though they are a democracy they have a communist party but it does not rule country as it would in places like Russia.
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