Powers
By convention, the president controls foreign-affairs and defense-related issues of the state, while the prime minister manages the day-to-day affairs including the economy.
The prime minister heads the Cabinet, which in turn plays a leading role in shaping the agenda of the houses of Parliament. It may propose laws to Parliament as well as amendments during parliamentary meetings.
Under the system created by the 1980 constitutional amendments, the president is the pre-eminent executive figure who appoints the prime minister.
When the president's political party or supporters control Parliament, the president is in effect the ‘dominant’ player in executive action, choosing whoever he wishes for government, and having it follow ‘his’ political agenda.
However, when the president's political opponents control Parliament, the president's dominance can be severely limited, as he must choose a prime minister and Cabinet reflecting the majority in Parliament.
When parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum control Parliament and the presidency, the power-sharing arrangement is known as cohabitation. Several cohabitation governments took control in the 1970s yet proved to be very unstable.
Read more about this topic: Prime Minister Of Egypt
Famous quotes containing the word powers:
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,
That my old care may cease....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)