Page:British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 144 (1952).djvu/1399

Rh group together the modifications which, by their nature, demand a joint pronouncement. A separate pronouncement upon one or various texts may be demanded by one-third of the members of the Convention. Modification or modifications must be approved by a majority of votes which shall not be less than 35 per cent. of the citizens inscribed in the national civil register.

In the cases of paragraphs (a) and (b), only those drafts which have been presented at least 6 months previously to the date of the next elections, or 3 months previously in the case of substitutive formulas approved by the General Assembly under the provisions of paragraph (a), shall be submitted to plebiscitary ratification simultaneously with the next elections. Those presented later than the periods mentioned shall be submitted to plebiscite at the following elections.

(d) The Constitution may also be modified by constitutional laws which shall require for their sanction two-thirds of the total number of votes of the members of each of the Chambers in the same legislature. Constitutional laws may not be vetoed by the Executive Power, and shall enter into force after the electorate, especially convoked on the day which the same law determines, has expressed its approval by an absolute majority of the votes cast, and they shall be promulgated by the President of the General Assembly.

(e) If the convocation of the electorate for the ratification of the modifications, in the cases of paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d), should coincide with any election of members of State organs, the citizens should express their wishes regarding the constitutional reforms on a separate document, independently of the election lists. When the modifications refer to elections for posts of an elective nature, on being submitted to plebiscite voting for these posts shall be made simultaneously by the system proposed and by the previous system, and the decision of the plebiscite shall be binding.

282. The precepts of the present Constitution which recognise rights of individuals, as well as those which attribute powers and impose duties on the public authorities, shall not fail to be applied on account of the lack of the respective regulations, but the absence of such regulations shall be made good by having recourse to the guiding spirit of analagous laws, to the general principles of law, and to generally admitted doctrines.