Beiträge mit tag "Google

Ah, what joy! The voters have spoken in North Rhine Westphalia – exposing one of the greatest flaws of German politics: federalism! While others may regard it an extra protection against giving too much power to a single person, I still regard it a serious flaw, because it allows to happen what Germany is facing right now. Just FYI, in Germany the federal elections are held independently from the elections in the states. German elections explained in a nutshell: Unlike the US of A, the states’ “governors” (“Ministerpraesidenten” as we call them) and the number of states a specific party “wins” have absolutely no effect on how the government in Berlin is formed. The states have an influence on how many seats in the federal parliament the respective parties of all states get, but that’s it. So where is the flaw? Since the governing party (or parties, as it is the case with CDU and FDP right now) and the chancellor at the helm are voted for directly by the people in a great federal election, it is possible that party A wins the majority in the federal elections and their candidate is pronounced chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, while party B holds the majority in the federal parliament (I shall spare you with the difference between “Bundesrat” and “Bundestag”…google is your friend), since they got the most votes state-wise. To make the problem worse, federal elections and state-level elections are not being held at the same time, because the legislative period on the federal level (chancellor and governing party) lasts four years, while the legislative periods on state level last five…except for the states of Bremen and Hamburg (which are considered city-states…the reason being of historical origin too boring to explain here), where the legislative periods last four years. This leads to the elections being anticyclical, which means: party A (or a coalition) might have the majority in both the federal elections and in the federal parliament, but if that majority happens to have been a close shave, they could lose it in any state-level election held within the legislative period of four years – which has just happened!

While the CDU (Completely Dysfunctional Union) and the FDP (Fatal Democratic Pandemonium) are still the governing parties in Berlin, they lost so many voters in the state of North Rhine Westphalia that from tonight they no longer have a majority in the “Bundesrat”…while optimists welcome it as a “balance to the government”, I welcome it as “the demise of the government”…I am not convinced, the Government will take the result “as a warning” as the German minister of applied linguistics and head of the FDP, Guido Westerwelle said…I much rather think, this will lead to even more disagreement on both federal and state level leading to an unleverable blockage between the governing parties and the parliament for the rest of the legislative period…bloody marvellous, but I never expected the coalition to work in the first place…and rumour has it, being foreign minister of Germany is by far not the first job, Westerwelle has blown so far…

cd