People’s representation and democracy are the essential features of modern parliamentarism. They are constitutional and legal categories, meaning that all power belongs to the people. This provision is most fully reflected in Art. 3 of the Constitution of Turkmenistan that the sovereignty of Turkmenistan is exercised by the people, who are the only source of state power. The people of Turkmenistan exercise their power directly or through representative bodies. This principle is reflected in many norms of our Basic Law and most clearly expresses the dominant provision on the relationship and combination of interests of the authorities and the people.

The search for the most favourable form of democracy, corresponding to the mentality of the people and the traditions of the nation or the country, is a rather lengthy and complex process. To a certain extent, they resemble the historical analogues of the all-people assembly, the national assembly (agora and ecclesia) in Ancient Greece, the Slavic folk assembly and others. Among the Turkmen, they are rooted in the distant past. Maslahats, kurultays and councils of elders among the Turkic peoples, which include the Turkmen, acted as bodies of popular representation. As history shows, one of the important organisational and legal means of expressing the interests of the people (of all segments of the population) has always been precisely the bodies of people’s representation.