Government of Mar de Cristal
From Mardecristal
The government of Mar de Cristal is a federal, semi-presidential system, with certain powers being reserved to the comarcas by the constitution.
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Federal government
Executive branch
Presidency
The head of state is the President of the Republic, Presidente de la República, elected by direct universal suffrage for fixed terms of five years. The president's most important duties involve international relations. His or her appointments and international treaties must be ratified by the Senate, or by the House of Deputies and the Senate in the case of expenditures of money and certain other cases. The president's assent is necessary for a bill to become law; the president has a line-item veto over bills. As with the Senate's veto, the bill is returned to the House for reconsideration. If it is amended, it is re-passed to the Senate and President for consideration de novo; if it is not amended, it must then be passed by a two-thirds majority of the House in order to become law.
Prime Minister and ministry
Following an election of the House, the president calls on a person (by tradition, the leader of the majority party in the House) to be the prime minister (primer ministro), form a government, and name ministers. This ministry, together with the governors and premiers of the comarcas, form the Council of State (Consejo de Estado) which has certain executive duties.
The Prime Minister and ministry must retain the confidence of the House. If there is a successful vote of no confidence, or if the house loses supply, the government must either resign (allowing the President to choose a different government) or request an extraordinary election (as a result of which the President dissolves both houses of Parliament).
By convention, ministers (including the prime minister) are sitting deputies, although this is not necessary. In the case where a minister is not a sitting deputy (for example, a senator), he or she must designate a deputy to serve as his or her spokesperson in the house and answer questions directed at that minister.
Legislative branch
The parliament or Congreso de Mar de Cristal is composed of two houses: the House of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados) and the Senate (Senado). It sits in the Alcázar de La Luz.
House of Deputies
The House's single-member constituencies (circunscripciones) are elected by an instant runoff voting system. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference; if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the lowest-ranking candidate is dropped and his or her votes transferred to their second choices. (Voters may choose to rank as many of the candidates as they want. However, equal ranking is not permitted; any equal-ranked votes are ignored. Discontiguous numbers are made contiguous, so a ranking of 1, 2, 5, 6 is reckoned as 1, 2, 3, 4.) The constituencies are devised to hold roughly equal total populations.
The house sits for a three-year term or until an extraordinary election.
Senate
Half of the 100 senators are elected by strict proportional representation on a party list system by comarca; the party provides a list of candidates for each comarca, and members are chosen from the top of each list in proportion to the number of votes received. (Independent candidates may run as single-member "lists".)
The other half is a regional representation system where the legislatures of each of the nine comarcas chooses five senators. The Federal District returns three senators and the territory of Sierra Azul, two.
