Schroeder faces confidence vote to trigger elections
German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder faces a confidence motion he hopes to lose today, in a bid to bring down his own government and seek a new mandate for stalled economic reforms in early autumn elections.
To do that, he has to pull off a feat of political juggling: lose the vote by making his own supporters abstain, and then rally disgruntled party members for an uphill fight for re-election amid high unemployment and sluggish economic growth.
His Social Democratic party trails the opposition Christian Democrats of Angela Merkel by some 17 percentage points.
Schroeder will ask his own deputies to abstain from the confidence vote, to be held at around 10.30am Irish time, so that his governing coalition with the Greens falls short of a majority. Schroeder has said he would be abstaining himself.
Despite grumbling from his backbenchers, who are unhappy with the idea of having their four-year term cut short by a year, the move appears all but certain to succeed. With 304 seats held by the Social Democratic-Greens coalition in the 601-seat Bundestag, four or more abstentions would leave the government short of the 301 votes needed to express confidence.
German president Horst Koehler would then have 21 days to decide whether the government truly lacked the support to run the country. If he concurs, elections must be held with 60 days. Koehler is expected to take most or all of the 21 days to decide, in order to avoid having elections fall during the summer holiday season.
Schroeder has struggled against rising unemployment and economic stagnation, hindered by people in his own party who mistrusted limited pro-business measures he took to relieve the costs to companies from Germany’s extensive system of social benefits and worker protections.
Dubbed “Agenda 2010”, his reforms have not yet led to more growth, which was 1.7% last year after three years near zero. Nor have they dented unemployment, which is at 11.6% with some 4.7 million out of work, well above the 3.9 million he decried when he took office in 1998.
“If we do not significantly lower the unemployment rate, then we will not deserve to be re-elected,” he said at the time. He managed to barely win re-election in 2002 – but by opposing the unpopular US-led invasion of Iraq, not by fixing unemployment. The words still dog him.
Legally, Schroeder must convince Koehler that his Cabinet no longer has the support in parliament it needs to govern. The proposal has met with some scepticism, since the coalition retains a majority – although a thin one.
Koehler’s decision is crucial since the constitution does not ermit parliament to dissolve itself.
If Koehler rules that the government is still able to rule, Schroeder could resign to force new elections.
Deputies and minor parties have vowed to challenge the confidence procedure in court, adding a further possible complication.
Polls suggest that German voters are eager to have their say; some 71% approved of the idea of elections this year instead of next. Twenty-four per cent were opposed, according to the poll of 1,001 people for the Forsa organisation. The poll gave no margin of error.
