Abstract: | The lack of the act on an internal system of the Silesian Voivodship, which, according to the
14th article of the organic status, is to regulate the details of the right to interpel, made the
regulations of the sessions of the Silesian Sejm define it in subsequent terms of office.
The studies of the issue in question made use of the archive materials of the Team no 17 (the
Silesian Sejm), especially the session protocols of the Regulation Committee preparing the projects
of regulations, parliamentary prints, stenographic reports from plenary sessions of the Silesian
Sejm. Besides, these constituted the regulations of the sessions of the Legislative Sejm and the
Sejm of the Republic of Poland of the I—V terms of office.
The analysis conducted makes it clear that the regulations on interpellations, included in four
regulations of the Silesian parliament, i.e. article 44 of two regulations of the Silesian Sejm I (from
13 October 1922 and 31 January 1923); in article 24 and 25 of the regulation of the sessions of
the Silesian Sejm II (from 17 June 1930), amended on 24 September 1935) and finally the article
84 of the regulation of the Silesian Sejm IV (from March 11 1936) were far from originality,
constituting almost the copies of the regulations of both the Legislative Sejm (regulation I of the
Silesian Sejm) and bichamber Sejms of the Second Republic of Poland preceding them. Some,
however, insignificant degree of originality can be noticed only in the fragments of the principles
of regulations of the Silesian Sejm I and II which formulated the conditions of the acceptability
of discussions on interpellation and the answer to it. Silesian rules, in this respect, constituted
some extras in comparison to the principles of the Poland-wide regulations as the latter did not
include them.
A reception of Poland-wide interpellation patterns concerned only the basic rules. Specific
resolutions had to be different by nature. Thus, the Silesian regulations involve other addressees
of interpellation, instead of the Government and the Prime Minister, the Silesian Voivode and the
Voivodship Council. There were different terms of expecting the explanations of interpellation
bodies, i.e. 30 days in the regulations of the Poland-wide Sejms, 3 weeks in Silesian regulations, a
varying extent of interpellation support, 15 signatures in the regulations of the Republic of
Poland Sejms, 7, 5 or 3 in the regulations of the Silesian Sejm. The Silesian solutions, original in
their details, were the necessity deriving from the specificity of the Silesian Sejm as such and the
fact that interpellations of the Silesian Sejm could refer to exclusively the issues of the Silesian
Voivodship, not the whole area of the Republic of Poland. |