Politiniai ir teisiniai veiksniai, lėmę ankstyvą Lietuvos Tarybos pasitraukimą iš politinės arenos

Abstract

This article reveals the implications that made the Lithuanian Council to step aside allowing the Temporary Government to continue the further process of restitution of Lithuania, immediately after becoming the central constitutional state institution. Prior to that, Lithuanian (State) Council had managed to declare the independence of Lithuania on the 16th of February 1918 under extremely difficult political circumstances and established the statehood on the 2nd of November of the same year. Under the will of the Vilnius conference of Lithuania that took place in autumn of 1917, all Lithuanian political streams of these days have been represented in the Lithuanian Council. However, the Council itself has not managed to save the representative ability by agreeing with the resignation of its left element and by continuing the expansion and distance from the community of Lithuania. The Council has become an institution representing the right wing of the Lithuanian community which could not ensure any greater support. This has become especially relevant when, during the transition of 1918-1919, a real threat has emerged to the survival of the state. The constitution of cabinet of Ministers, which has been formed on the basis of wide coalition hoping for the support of wider layers of the Lithuanian residents, did no longer match the political constitution of the Council, which distorted the relationship of the Council with the executive power that had been construed on the basis of parliamentarism in the Temporary Constitution. These circumstances encouraged the corrections of the provisions of the Temporary Constitution in early 1919 – the executive power has received an alternative legislative power, the collegial ruler of the state in the form of Council Presidium has been replaced by a single-person President who received the exceptional right to form and release the sessions of the Council. By accepting the new constitutional provisions, the Council has itself transferred the initiative and dominant positions to the executive power and sanctioned itself as the object of discretion of the executive power. Even when the direct threat for statehood has started to diminish, the process of the transition of the political impact centre to the executive power appeared to be irreversible.