The Hindu : International : German election campaign picks up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 26, 2005

International

International

German election campaign picks up

Vaiju Naravane

Angela Merkel leads in opinion polls

PARIS: The German electoral campaign picked up even greater momentum on Thursday when the constitutional court gave the green light to the September 18 legislative poll.

In a seven-to-one ruling, the court threw out complaints lodged by two MPs who claimed the poll was unconstitutional. They said the Government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had engineered the no-confidence vote in Parliament and this, they claimed, violated Germany's Basic law.

Strategic move

In fact, a majority of MPs from the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition stayed away from the vote on party orders. Such a move was necessary because under German law, an early poll can be held only if the President dissolves Parliament.

President Horst Koehler was obliged to do so once the Government had tabled its confidence vote and been defeated with the active support of its party members.

This is one of the most important elections in recent German history. The country is in the grip of a severe economic crisis and Mr. Schroeder's attempts to introduce reforms giving employers more flexibility to hire and fire workers as well as cutting back generous pension and health care benefits have made him deeply unpopular. His Social democratic SPD party has lost almost every regional and by election in the country.

Opinion polls give Angela Merkel, a conservative candidate from East Germany a definite lead in the polls. But the German right is fractured and with the election too close to call, observers are not ruling a grand coalition between the conservative CDU-CSU and the SPD-Green alliance.

Over the last two days politicians have used floods in several parts of Germany to heap blame on each other.

Mr. Schroeder pledged federal help for afflicted regions but said the conservative leadership in Bavaria had skimped on protective measures for vulnerable areas. Just three years ago, Mr. Schroeder had scored a narrow victory in a tight race against Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International