This Monday, Germany cleared the last obstacle to calling early elections on February 23. Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to ask the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for parliamentary dissolution this afternoon. Thus the electoral calendar is activated and everything is ready for the campaign. Defeat was the result that the social democrats were looking for after .
Of the 717 deputies who voted, 394 opted for the no207 voters Yeah and 116 abstained. The majority stood at 367. The heterogeneous majority that withdrew confidence in the chancellor is specific, as it includes the extreme right, excluded from any coalition by a cordon sanitaire. The reality is that in Germany there was no majority to govern, but neither was there a majority to overthrow the government in a motion of censure. Hence the question of trust and elections were the only way out.
The session had started at 1:00 p.m. with a speech by the chancellor and a debate that was scheduled to last for at least two hours, at the end of which the vote would take place, which took place more than three hours after the start.
“My goal is to bring forward the elections to the Bundestag,” Scholz declared at the beginning of a speech repeatedly interrupted by applause from his party and protests from the opposition. He also had to ask, at least formally, for trust, and he resolved it by saying that he was asking for it, not directly from the parliamentarians, but “from the citizens.”
“We could not continue like this,” the social democrat justified the dismissal of the Minister of Finance, the liberal Christian Lindner, after months of ego fights and deep disagreements over economic policy at a time of recession and industrial crisis. “because it is something that requires moral maturity.”
The chancellor’s words set the tone. The chamber and the tribunes of the Reichstag, where there was no room for another deputy or journalist, were the scene of a vibrant, at times aggressive, debate; an appetizer of what the campaign will be like.
Scholz, with the polls against him, defended massive investments in the battered infrastructure, schools and hospitals; He asked to put aside the austerity that Lindner promoted in the Government; and relax debt rules: “If there is a country in the world that can afford to invest in the future, it is us.” For Scholz, it is about recovering the social democratic soul with classic concepts such as – precisely – “trust.” Or “respect” for the working classes and retirees, and measures such as the reduction in VAT for food. Also “protection”, “prudence”, or “peace”, another historical value of the party: “With me as chancellor, we will not send soldiers to Ukraine.”
The Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, favorite to succeed Scholz, took the floor and charged: “You leave the country with one of the worst crises since the postwar period. And he comes here to tell us that we must go into debt at the expense of the new generations.” “Mr. Federal Chancellor,” he concluded, “you raise the question of trust today. He had his chance and he didn’t use it. It is valid for today and for February 23: it does not deserve trust.”
Once Scholz has lost the confidence of Parliament, the electoral machinery gets underway with the presentation of the programs this Tuesday. After the Christmas break, the parties will launch into a short, winter campaign, an unusual season for legislative elections (only three of the 20 held in the country’s history have fallen on those dates).
The Fundamental Law of 1949, seen and done, shielded the possibilities of dissolving Parliament. The constitutional route available is to raise a question of trust with the aim of losing it. Willy Brandt already did it in 1972 and was repeated by Helmut Kohl in 1982 and Gerhard Schröder in 2005.
The electoral advance
Scholz has achieved what he wanted: the electoral advance. But the parliamentary defeat certifies the failure of the coalition with the Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party that he himself broke by dismissing the ministers of the latter party.
The unknown, this Tuesday, was that Scholz would unexpectedly see his intention to lose the confidence of the Bundestag frustrated, and win the motion. It was clear that the Christian Democratic opposition, the liberals and the post-communist and populist left would vote against the chancellor. It was clear that his party, the SPD, would vote in favor. And although the Greens, still their government partners, also voted in favor, there was room for uncertainty. It would have happened if the deputies of the far-right Alternative for Germany party had decided to support the chancellor with the sole purpose of frustrating his plan to bring forward the elections. Since it is a public vote, however, saving the Government could have an electoral cost, although three ended up supporting it, according to the count of The mirror.
To avoid surprises, and to mark distance with their partner Scholz before the campaign, The Greens abstained. For the Government, it was about losing and in this sense the chancellor can say: objective achieved. Another thing will be to remain in office after the elections and avoid the exceptional fate of the chancellors of a single and abbreviated mandate. The last one was Kurg-Georg Kiesinger between 1966 and 1969.
