Reform
The unrest during the Russo-Japanese War resulted in a general strike in Finland in October 1905. The most immediate result was the Emperor's manifesto that cancelled all illegal regulations. A parliament based on universal and equal suffrage was also promised. An extraordinary session of the diet in December 1905 was called to implement the parliamentary reforms. The proposal was presented to the Emperor on 15 March 1906 and after his approval it was submitted to the estates on 9 May. The reforms came to force on 1 October 1906. The diet was reformed from a legislative assembly of four Estates into a unicameral parliament of 200 members. At the same time universal suffrage was introduced, which gave all men and women, 24 years or older, the right to vote and stand for election. Acts on the right of parliament to monitor members of the government, on the Freedom of Speech, Assembly and Association, and Freedom of the Press were also introduced. These reforms established the hallmarks of today's Parliament of Finland. The first election to the new parliament was arranged in 1907.
Read more about this topic: Diet Of Finland
Famous quotes containing the word reform:
“Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice.”
—Alison Neilans. “Justice for the Prostitute—Lady Astor’s Bill,” Equal Rights (September 19, 1925)