French Fifth Republic members of the Senate. From that date, the opposition has been able to have controversial new statutes examined for constitutionality. Source: Source: French Fifth Republic The Fifth Republic, France's current republican system of government, was established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the Fourth Republic, replacing the former parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential, or dual-executive, system that split powers between a Prime Minister as head of government and a President as head of state. De Gaulle, who was the first French President elected
Republic of the Congo of the French colony of Equatorial Africa. The Republic of the Congo was established on the 28th of November 1958 but gained independence from France in 1960. In 1970, the People's Republic of the Congo was established as a Marxist–Leninist one-party state; this lasted until 1991. The sovereign state has had multi-party elections since 1992, although a democratically elected government was ousted in the 1997 Republic of the Congo Civil War, and President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who first came to power in 1979, has ruled for 33 of the past 38 years. The Republic of the Congo has become the