Temporary National Representation

The Temporary National Representation (Serbo-Croatian: Privremeno narodno predstavništvo), also the Interim National Legislation,^[1] and 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 generally appointed by various provincial and regional assemblies or commissions. The main product of its work was the act regulating the upcoming election of the Constitutional Assembly. The Temporary National Representation's work ceased after the election held on 28 November.

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 before establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The greatest numbers 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 election of the Constituent Assembly in line with the 1917 Corfu Declaration of the government of the Kingdom of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee on creation of a common state of the South Slavs after the World War One. While the Constituent Assembly was to determine the constitution of the new country, the work of the Temporary National Representation was affected by political struggle of four different political currents aiming at various levels of (de)centralisation of the state administration. The proponents of greater centralisation successfully used the period of work of the interim parliament to gain advantage over the other designs for the constitution of the country.