GERMANY: Germany's general election can proceed as planned next month after the country's highest court threw out appeals by two parliamentarians.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder welcomed the constitutional court's "unreserved endorsement" of his political gamble to deliberately lose a confidence motion and force the early election date.
The two MPs who failed to stop the election warned that the verdict set a dangerous precedent, moving Germany from a parliamentary democracy to a "chancellor democracy".
The court, in a 7-1 verdict, said President Horst Köhler was correct to call for elections a year early, on September 18th.
The instability of Weimar Republic governments and the contribution of this to the rise of the Nazis lead Germany's postwar leaders to create constitutional barriers preventing governments from dissolving at will or picking politically favourable times to call elections.
Mr Schröder brought down his government in June, saying that public and internal party criticism of its social and labour reforms had robbed him of the authority to govern.
The court said yesterday: "No other evaluation can be unequivocally drawn other than the chancellor's assessment that he could, in the future, no longer pursue a political course with the majority of the parliament."
However, the court admitted that it had to take the chancellor's word that he lacked authority.
After the ruling, Mr Schröder said: "For me [ the election] is about confirmation of my reform politics . . . I need a new mandate."
However, Werner Schulz of the Green party coalition partners said the ruling brushed aside postwar parliamentary protections.
"This is not my personal defeat, but a defeat for parliamentary democracy. In the future it will suffice for the chancellor just to suspect a lack of confidence to be able to send the parliament home," he said.
One of the judges, Hans-Joachim Jentsch, shared Mr Schulz's opinion, saying that the deliberately lost confidence vote, from which 147 MPs abstained, was the first time the government did not have a parliamentary majority.
"Indeed, the SPD [ Social Democrats] parliamentary party members could only be induced to abstain when the party leader said it would serve the chancellor as a vote of confidence," Mr Jentsch said.
The ruling is the legal starting gun for a general election campaign that is already long under way.
Opinion polls show Mr Schröder's Social Democrats still heading for a clear defeat, with the SPD-Green coalition at least 13 points behind the Christian Democrat-lead alternative.