Source: The Epoch Times
Conservative leader Friedrich Merz failed on Tuesday to gain enough votes to be elected chancellor by the German parliament.
What was supposed to be a shoo-in turned into a shock defeat for Merz, who became the first candidate since the establishment of the parliament at the end of World War II to garner the majority support needed.
In February’s general election, Merz’s center-right CDU won the highest number of votes at 22.5 percent,
falling short of a majority. After lengthy negotiations, the CDU made an agreement with the center-left SPD to form a coalition government.
Lawmakers were widely expected to back Merz as chancellor in what was considered a formality in a vote in the lower house of parliament.
However Merz won just 310 votes, Bundestag President Julia Kloeckner
said. He needed 316 to secure a majority.
Just hours after his defeat, the vote will be re-run again on Tuesday.
Merz
has vowed
never to govern with the the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) which came in second in the general election, even though doing so would ensure a clear majority.
AfD leader Alice Weidel told The Epoch Times that the result was “a sign of instability” within the CDU-SPD coalition. “Friedrich Merz is unable to rally his own ranks. And that is the opposite of what this country needs. This country needs stability,” she said.
She also called for new elections.
“What I’m demanding is simply to clear the way. We should hold new elections. We need a stable government. And voters want a center-right government,” she added.
The lack of votes is a major blow for Merz, who just prior to the vote had vowed to reform Germany. The BBC
reported that former chancellor Angela Merkel had come to the Bundestag to watch the vote take place.
“As of tomorrow, you will have a government that is determined to move Germany forward through reforms and investments,” Merz said on
Monday after his full cabinet was unveiled.
The parties have to discuss the next step but it was not immediately clear how long the process could take.
If Merz or any other candidate fails to get that majority during the period of 14 days, the constitution allows for the president to appoint the candidate who wins the most votes as chancellor, or to dissolve the Bundestag and hold a new national election.
Volker Resing, who wrote the recent biography “Friedrich Merz: His Path to Power,” said he was surprised at something he said that “has never happened before” in post-war Germany.
“It shows how fragile the coalition’s situation is and that some lawmakers are prepared to spread uncertainty—that’s a warning signal,” Resing
said after the vote.
In January, Merz vowed permanent border controls after a deadly knife attack in Bavaria and arrest of an Afghan asylum-seeker.
However, the day after he won the election, Merz sent a different message, saying, “None of us is talking about closing borders.”
A cornerstone of Merz’s campaign was to uphold Germany’s strict constitutional borrowing limit known as the
debt brake, or Schuldenbremse.
In the
CDU manifesto, it said: “Now is the time to … uphold the debt brake enshrined in the German Constitution (Grundgesetz). Today’s debts are tomorrow’s tax increases.”
In March CDU and potential coalition partner, the center-left SPD, passed legislation for a 500 billion euro ($543 billion) fund, financed by borrowing, for infrastructure in Germany over the next 12 years to support its
struggling economy.
Last week Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially classified AfD as
“extremist.”
A survey by Ipsos in
March showed that the AfD party topped the polls for the first time.
AfD announced that it was suing the country’s domestic intelligence service for classifying it as a “right-wing extremist organization.”
The designation subjects the party, which came second in the national elections in February, to greater surveillance from state authorities.
The AfD initiated legal proceedings at an administrative court in the city of Cologne, where the domestic intelligence service has its headquarters.
A
statement from joint leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said the lawsuit was sending a “clear message against the abuse of state power” and that the designation was designed to “suppress and marginalize the opposition.”
Reuters, Associated Press and Guy Birchall contributed to this report.
