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2005-07-02 Europe
Schröder begins painful end to his chancellorship
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Posted by .com 2005-07-02 08:06|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11132 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Wow - I've gotten rusty. Could this be moved to Page 3 and some of the (Where the hell did they come from?) excess blank lines removed? Sheesh. Things don't work the same anymore with embedded tables and such. My apologies.
Posted by .com 2005-07-02 08:18||   2005-07-02 08:18|| Front Page Top

#2 I'm no fan of Schroeder, but due credit. A fork in the road has been reached and he has engineered an early election for the voters to decide. Germany's great error in the 20th century was not to ally with the Brits. Perhaps they will rectify that error in the 21st century.
Posted by phil_b 2005-07-02 09:29||   2005-07-02 09:29|| Front Page Top

#3 No due credit.
A politician who realizes that he has failed hands in his resignation and does not make a sham of the Constitution.
What Schroeder did could very well lead the president to refuse new elections and we'd be facoing a year of agony.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-07-02 12:12||   2005-07-02 12:12|| Front Page Top

#4 I predict that Germans, like Swedes, won't be able to break their addiction to socialism. Schöder may very well win, once he is free to run a vicious campaign based on anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.
Posted by Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-07-02 12:59||   2005-07-02 12:59|| Front Page Top

#5 He won't win.
But if he does I'm moving to the US
Posted by True German Ally 2005-07-02 13:31||   2005-07-02 13:31|| Front Page Top

#6 Well, you'll have some interesting ex-pat communities to choose from, if you'd like to hang with German-Americans. The Germantowns in Pennsylvania and Texas are like, I have heard, visiting your grandparents. Signs in old script and very formal language. However, Germans who've arrived since 1900 tended to integrate quickly.
Posted by Anonymoose 2005-07-02 13:52||   2005-07-02 13:52|| Front Page Top

#7 I don't have much hope Merkel can win. I see the same old same old red/green cabal back in power and Germany headding down the tubes blaming everyone else for her plight. That after is the German way things go bad blame someone else. Last time is was the Jews, undermenschen and "back stabbers." This time it (is) will be the USA.

All I can do is hope the German people wake up.
Posted by Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-07-02 14:05||   2005-07-02 14:05|| Front Page Top

#8 TGA, let me get this straight, it was by setting his government up for a loss in the no confidence vote that allows for the "year of agony" or praying/playing for time....?
Posted by Shipman 2005-07-02 14:56||   2005-07-02 14:56|| Front Page Top

#9 Shipman, hard to say.
When the SPD lost the biggest German land Schroeder announced anticipated elections. I guess the idea was to keep the leftists quiet who were about to rebel and finish Schröder off AND try to catch the opposition unaware, make them blunder and grab another victory.
This plan clearly failed. The opposition quickly elected Merkel and the SPD now faces a new far left party made up of ex East German SED members and disgruntled far left ex SPD members, including former SPD party boss Lafontaine. They formed a far left union that, due to its popularist undertones, may attract the far right as well.
So it's possible that Schroeder still wants the elections to go down with flying colors (he seems to have enough) while parts of the SPD (including party boss Muentefering) have changed their minds about the early elections. Muentefering made the non confidence vote look like the sham it was. He knows that several members of Parliament are going to challenge the early elections at Germany's High Court.
Their success is not too unlikely given the poor show talent of the SPD. The Constitution does not allow for frivolous non confience votes in order to dissolve Parliament.
Muenteferings plan may be that Schroeder will resign if the High Court vetoes early elections, take Schroeder's job, promise a lot of things to please the electorate and hope that Merkel crumbles.
In a year a lot of things can happen. If we do have elections in September Merkel will win.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-07-02 15:37||   2005-07-02 15:37|| Front Page Top

#10 What is a "frivolous" non-confidence vote? Seriously, will the court subpoena the various member who skipped the session to determine if they would have made the difference? I mean, it's obvious that the whole thing was rigged, but "obvious" doesn't apply when you are in front of a judge. At least in the US, it doesn't. Just ask OJ.

If the President accepts the vote, but part of the SPD takes it to the court, will they rule in time? Will the High Court postpone the elections so they have time to argue the case? Or will the elections go ahead and then the court say it doesn't count? (If the latter, they'd have a great future in Florida or Washington.)

This could make Bush vs. Gore look like a traffic court case.

Maybe the EU will simply take the country under its direct control. You need higher tax rates and more strenuous regulations, right?
Posted by Jackal">Jackal  2005-07-02 15:56|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2005-07-02 15:56|| Front Page Top

#11 Frivolous in that sense:

The chancelor asks his party to abstain in the nonconfidence vote, claiming he cannot count on the leftists in his coalition.

30 minutes later the party boss challenges the opposition by saying: "We are all behind Schroeder".

One hour later half of the party abstains.

It can't get anymore frivolous than that. And only one member of Parliament, a Green (but he came from the DDR-opposition of the late 80s) called it the sham it was.

The President now has a problem. If he okays the deal and dissolves the Bundestag, the Constitutional Court could overrule him by saying that the dissolution of Parliament was unconstitutional because the non confidence vote was staged (everyone knows that it was but you don't want to be too obvious about it.)

That's not very funny for a President whose supreme task it is to "protect and uphoild the Constitution). So he might simply refuse the dissolution although 80% of Germans favor it and the President himself knows that it is in the best interest of the country.

Rock, meet hard place.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-07-02 16:50||   2005-07-02 16:50|| Front Page Top

#12 Geez, TGA - and people make fun of our elections. At least they're pretty straightforward, even to the Democrats voting the cemetaries.

I don't really understand the parliamentary system, but I sure don't like it. It's way to confusing. :-(
Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut  2005-07-02 19:24|| http://www.ariellestjohndesigns.com]">[http://www.ariellestjohndesigns.com]  2005-07-02 19:24|| Front Page Top

#13 TGA, join us in Cincinnati. It was settled by Bavarians after the 1848 debacle, and has the 2nd biggest Oktoberfest in the world... and the first branch of the Hofbrauhaus opened last year just across the river.
Posted by trailing wife 2005-07-02 20:08||   2005-07-02 20:08|| Front Page Top

#14 To join in the invites, how about the Southwest. I was good enough for Werner von Braun. And we get German air units training out here yearly.

To get back to the legal issues, let's say the President turns a blind eye to the shenanigans and certifies the vote, thus setting the election for September. That means the Constitutional Court has 2 months to reverse him. Can they do it in that amount of time?

And if they do reverse him, can he then be impeached for not following his oath of office?
Posted by Jackal">Jackal  2005-07-02 21:09|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2005-07-02 21:09|| Front Page Top

#15 "It's way too confusing."

I shoulda started my 4th drinking earlier. Apparently I can't type when I'm sober. :-(
Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut  2005-07-02 22:29|| http://www.ariellestjohndesigns.com]">[http://www.ariellestjohndesigns.com]  2005-07-02 22:29|| Front Page Top

23:43 Frank G
23:42 Frank G
23:39 Frank G
22:53 Jan
22:47 john
22:43 muck4doo
22:40 Bomb-a-rama
22:36 Shipman
22:29 Barbara Skolaut
22:15 muck4doo
22:09 Rocky
22:05 Sock Puppet 0’ Doom
22:04 Red Dog
21:54 Frank G
21:42 Mangy w/haircut
21:31 Atomic Conspiracy
21:19 john
21:10 Ebbolutle Glomoter8655
21:09 Jackal
21:04 Frank G
20:52 Ebbolutle Glomoter8655
20:44 Shipman
20:43 Shipman
20:38 Shipman
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