Recognition of “impeachment” in comparison to “interpellation” in political systems

Abstract

Impeachment is an institution that can remove high-ranking officials of the executive who are disqualified and unfit to continue the office. Impeachment could be seen in the constitutional law of all kinds of political systems, including presidentialism, semi-presidentialism and the parliamentary Republic. In some instances of domestic research, we see the fusion of impeachment and interpellation, which sometimes leads to mistakes leading to deduction. Scrutinizing the terminology of impeachment is the solution for such fusion. Accordingly, the question of the research is: what are the elements of impeachment in order to recognize it from interpellation? By the descriptive-analytic method, the research concludes that differences in officials and differences in grounds of removal are the most important elements and parameters for the distinction of these two terms. While impeachment targets officials with protected tenures or terms of office, interpellation is practiced mostly where ministers are subject to the confidence of the parliament. The common ground of Impeachment is removing a person or persons in the government whom the legislature deems unfit to continue in office due to subversive acts against the country and grave violations of public trust, which contain several instances like violations of law, corruption and treason. In addition, the procedure, stages and outcomes of impeachment and interpellation would be distinguished in many aspects. The paper is about to explain impeachment and distinguish it from interpellation.

Keywords

• impeachment
• interpellation
• high ranking officials of the executive
• removal
• disqualification