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Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective, but that doesn't sound all good.
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Mon Apr 3rd, 2006 at 06:59:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Can you expand?

(Not a query concerning girth).

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Apr 3rd, 2006 at 07:08:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, parties are a fact of life and so in a lot of ways, an anti-Parliament, anti-parties constitution is little more than elected dictatorship, a la Ancient Rome?

Particularly when it is "convention, custom and peer pressure" that is the main defense against abuse. As we've seen in the US and the UK a determined, media savvy government can run roughshod over such implicit restraints.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Mon Apr 3rd, 2006 at 07:25:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I agree. The Constitution of the 5th was written to set de Gaulle up with broad powers during the crisis of the Algerian war. Since then those powers, likened by some to those of a monarch, have been enjoyed by French presidents who have unsurprisingly not suggested reducing them...
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Apr 3rd, 2006 at 07:44:43 AM EST
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