Temporary National Representation

The Temporary National Representation (Serbo-Croatian: Privremeno narodno predstavništvo), also the Interim National Legislation^[1] and the Interim National Parliament,^[2] was the first legislative body established in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It was created by the decree of Prince Regent Alexander on 24 February 1919, and convened on 1 March. Its 294 members were appointed by various provincial and regional assemblies or commissions. The main product of its work was the act regulating the election of the Constitutional Assembly. The body's work ceased after the election held on 28 November 1920.

The seats in the Temporary National Representation were distributed by province and then assigned to various political parties depending on their representation in provincial and regional legislative bodies prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The greatest number of seats were assigned to the Democratic Party and the People's Radical Party. The largest traditionally Slovene political party in the interim parliament was the Slovene People's Party. The largest Croatian political party in the Temporary National Representation was the Croatian Union.

The Temporary National Representation was set up primarily to prepare for the election of the Constituent Assembly according to the 1917 Corfu Declaration of the government of the Kingdom of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee on the creation of a common state of the South Slavs after the First World War. While the Constituent Assembly was to determine the constitution of the new country, the work of the Temporary National Representation was affected by the political struggle of those for and against higher levels of state administrative centralisation. The proponents of greater centralisation successfully used the period of work of the interim parliament to gain an advantage over other designs for the constitution of the country.