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Politics
The official motto of Lao PDR is "Peace, Independence, Democracy, Unity, and Prosperity." Laos is led by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and directed by a Party Congress which meets every four or five years to elect Party leaders. Some important administrative organizations are the Prime Minister’s Office, the Bank of Lao PDR, the State Planning Committee, and the Nationalities Committee and others. The National Assembly, the government’s legislative body with between 40 and 45 members, meets once a year to approve the laws and legislation of the country. The President of Laos is the Head of the State and is elected by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly. Laos is divided into seventeen provinces and one special region. The country is further divided into 139 districts and 11,047 villages.

From 1975 to 1990, Laos did not have a constitution. A constitution was drafted and approved by the National Assembly in June 1990. The Constitution explicitly permits private enterprise and foreign investment. The first national legal Code was not passed until 1988: the Code on Foreign Investment. In 1994, the Law on the Promotion and Regulation of Foreign Investment superseded the Code. Over the 1988-2000 period, the government passed a host of laws to govern the economy: laws on tax, customs, business, banking, secured transactions, land, mining, domestic investment, labor, electricity, transportation, and so on.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the country. All other legislation issued must be consistent with the Constitution. The People’s Court is the ultimate legal authority. It consists of the Supreme Court, Provincial Courts, the Municipality Court, the District Courts and Military Courts. The judiciary consists of members of the Supreme Court and the State Public Prosecutors Office. The National Assembly appoints all judges of the Supreme Court and the State Public Prosecutor.

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