The preamble of the U.S. Constitution states: "We the People of the United States... do ordain and establish this Constitution..." This is widely interpreted to mean that "popular sovereignty - power to the people - is the foundation upon which the entire Constitution depends."
James Madison, hailed as the "father of the Constitution," said: "There be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people...That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution."
President Lincoln in his Gettysburg address said: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
A Gallup poll in 2013 found that 75 percent of Americans would vote for a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that members of Congress and the U.S. Senate can serve. This is consistent with pols since 1994. In 1995, in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional term limits can only be achieved by constitutional amendment, however the Congress has not felt compelled to initiate the process for such an amendment. Term limits are opposed by incumbent politicians and the special interests that support them.
A large majority of Americans would vote for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College system for the election of the U.S. president. Over the last 200+ years numerous efforts to abolish it have failed.
In 2015, in the U.S. nearly 13,000 people were killed by guns, an average of 36 people a day, and the year before a toddler shot someone about once a week. Although gun violence is endemic in the U.S., even after the worst mass shooting in American history, Congress failed to pass even mild measures of gun control - like barring individuals on the terror watch list from buying firearms and to tighten the background checks for gun buyers - which are supported by a large majority of the American people.
The U.S. Constitution provides that all legislative powers are vested in the Congress - the Senate and the House of Representatives - and amendments to the Constitution can be proposed either by two thirds of both houses of Congress, or by a constitutional convention called by two thirds of the State legislatures. Thus, although the "We the People of the United States..." may be understood to mean that the people are the sovereign - the supreme ruler - as democracy requires, only the politicians can make laws and amend the constitution. And the politicians have ignored and ignore the will of the people on numerous issues beyond the few examples mentioned above.
In Greece, the mother of democracy, the Constitution states: "Popular sovereignty is the foundation of government. All powers derive from the People and exist for the benefit of the People and the Nation; they shall be exercised as specified by the Constitution." Although the Constitution declares that the government is based on the sovereignty of the people, and all powers are derived from and for the benefit of the people, as experience shows, the exercise of these powers by the government "as specified by the Constitution" limits the sovereignty of the people and does not assure that they "exist for the benefit of people."
The first Constitution of Modern Greece was adopted in 1822 and since then it has been revised many times. The latest revision took place in 2008. With the exemption of a number of referenda on the question of retaining, or abolishing, or re-instituting the monarchy, and of the referendum of July 1973 - where the people, under dictatorial rule, were asked whether they were for or against a new Constitution drafted by the dictatorship of the colonels - the Greek people have not been asked to approve or disapprove any of the many revisions of the Constitution.
Article 110 of the Constitution states: "The need for revision of the Constitution shall be ascertained by a resolution of Parliament adopted, on the proposal of not less than fifty Members of Parliament... This resolution shall define specifically the provisions to be revised. Upon a resolution by Parliament on the revision of the Constitution, the next Parliament shall... decide on the provisions to be revised by an absolute majority." Proposals for revisions can be submitted only by members of the parliament, the parliament decides on what revisions would be considered, and the ruling majority in the parliament decides on what revisions will be adopted. It could be claimed that the revisions also represent the will of the people who elected the parliament. But it can be amply demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case. One of the most consequential and extensively publicized examples is the criminal liability of members of the government.
Article 85 of the Greek Constitution states: "The members of the Cabinet and the Undersecretaries shall be collectively responsible for general Government policy, and each of them [severally] for the actions or omissions within his area of responsibility according to the provisions of statutes on the liability of Ministers." The Constitution allows the parliament to pass special laws on the criminal liability of Ministers. It has been argued that the special legal arrangements for the criminal liability of those in the government are needed to protect them from unwarranted legal actions that would make their work problematic. This is reasonable, but it should not be used as an excuse to nearly provide legal immunity to members of the government.
The Greek Constitution provides extensively "according to the provisions of statutes." This allows the government to interpret basic clauses of the Constitution as it serves its purposes.
Article 86 (last revision 2001) of the Greek Constitution provides:
"Only the Parliament has the power to prosecute serving or former members of the Cabinet or Undersecretaries for criminal offences that they committed during the discharge of their duties...
Prosecution, investigation, preliminary investigation or preliminary examination...shall not be permitted without a prior resolution of Parliament ....
A motion for prosecution is submitted by at least thirty Members of Parliament. The Parliament...sets up a special parliamentary committee to conduct a preliminary examination; otherwise the motion is rejected as manifestly unfounded. The findings of the committee...are introduced to the Plenum of Parliament, which decides whether prosecution shall start or not... The Parliament may exercise its competence... until the end of the second regular session of the parliamentary term commencing after the offence was committed. The Parliament may at any time revoke its resolution or suspend the prosecution, preliminary proceedings or main proceedings..."
Typically, a cabinet member or undersecretary that may have committed a criminal act is a member of the majority in the parliament, which has a vested interest not to pass the resolution for the "prosecution, investigation, preliminary investigation or preliminary examination against" the accused. The majority of the special parliamentary committee set up to conduct the preliminary examination also belongs to the ruling party, and the findings of this committee have to be submitted to the plenum of the parliament, dominated by the ruling majority, to decide "whether prosecution shall start or not." Moreover, the majority in the parliament "may at any time revoke its resolution or suspend the prosecution, preliminary proceedings or main proceedings." The constitutional provisions violate basic principles of justice - impartiality, transparency, and equality before the law - repeatedly, and set multiple obstacles in the rendering of justice in cases of criminal acts committed by members of the government.
In 2005, in an interview to the newspaper Kathimerini, the then minister of Justice Nikos Dendias stated: "At this time, both the existing law and Article 86 of the Constitution, are in disharmony with popular sentiment." The newspaper article stated that the constitutional provisions "in combination with the 'normal practice' of the Parliament essentially provide impunity to the politicians."
In 2006, the former minister of Justice Ioannis Varvitsiotis referring to Article 86 of the Constitution wrote: "it was instituted a very complex process for the prosecution of ministers, which can hardly result in a referral to the court.... is obvious that if the minister "charged" belongs to the party that holds the majority in the Parliament, then the decision of the parliament, both for the formation of a special parliamentary committee to conduct a preliminary examination and for the final judgment for the prosecution, becomes almost impossible... I am astonished that the proposals of the government for the revision of the constitution do not include Article 86."
On April 13, 2011, in a speech to the Parliament, the then minister of Justice Charis Kastanidis referring to the law on the responsibility of the government ministers said: "The bill to amend the law on the Liability of Ministers... is the result of a demand expressed by the people... obvious political, moral and legal grounds impose on the Government and the Greek Parliament to respond to the demand of the Greek people ... to combat the phenomenon of corruption, and to establish, to the greatest possible degree, rules of transparency in the public life... There is an internal contradiction in the choice we have made over time. Regardless of how shining the conscience of the Members of the Parliament may be, they do not cease to be members of parties. So, even involuntarily they can be bound by party mandates, or party obligations. When the parliamentary process attempts to operate as a judicial process, there is a risk to prevail not the criterion of the judge, but that of the Parliament Member who is bound by party discipline. This contradiction in the Constitution must be removed." These statements reafirmed the demand of the people to amend the law, and eloquently state the reasoned basis of the need to amend the constitutional provisions on the liability of members of the government.
Although Article 1 provides that "popular sovereignty is the foundation of government," and "all powers derive from the People and exist for the People," Article 73 states: "The right to introduce Bills belongs to the Parliament and the Government." Although it is claimed that the people are sovereign, the Constitution established by the politicians deprives them their sovereign right to pass laws or recall laws passed by the politicians.
In representative democracy, the political parties present to the voters a package of proposals that promise to implement if elected, and an ideology that will guide their work as government (legislative, executive). The voters, by necessity, decide on a package basis although they may not like all the items in the package. Also, by the nature of things, the package presented to the voters cannot include unforeseen developments. Moreover, as experience abundantly shows, the politicians, when elected, take advantage of the fact that they will be judged on a package basis and take actions that serve their own interests up to the point that they consider that this will not risk their reelection. In Greece, the term "kommatokratia" is used to express the utter corruption of public life by the political parties. For the last thirty five years, public life, at all levels, has been organized around the political parties to serve the interests of the class of politicians and of those attached to them.
The only way to keep the politicians honest and for legislation to represent the will of the people, who are the sovereign, is for the people to be able to exercise their sovereign right to pass laws, and recall actions of the government when such actions are not in conformity with their will.