Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on Sunday for new federal elections in the autumn, one year ahead of schedule, after his Social Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in a regional poll.
The move is a high-stakes gamble, which analysts said might be aimed at catching Schroeder’s conservative rivals off-guard and silencing left-wing dissenters within his own party.
But it carries enormous risks for Schroeder, who has seen his personal ratings plunge as German unemployment has surged to post-war highs.
“With the bitter election result for my party in North Rhine-Westphalia [NRW] the political support for our reforms to continue has been called into question,” a shaken Schroeder told German television.
“I see it as my responsibility and duty as German Chancellor to persuade the President [Horst Koehler] ... to call new elections for the Bundestag as quickly as possible, realistically by autumn 2005.”
Two years ago, Schroeder unveiled a package of labor market reforms known as “Agenda 2010,” which sparked protests across the country. They include cuts in jobless benefits and stricter rules on means-testing for the long-term unemployed.
Options, precedents
Federal elections are held every four years for Germany’s lower house, the Bundestag, with the next one due at the end of 2006. Early elections are possible only in exceptional circumstances and the final decision rests with the German President, currently conservative Horst Koehler.
Schroeder could seek a vote of confidence in the Bundestag as early as next month. Should he lose that vote — the government can seek to lose it deliberately — Koehler would have 21 days to decide whether to dissolve parliament.
There are precedents for early elections. The Bundestag was dissolved early at the behest of Christian Democrat Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who wanted new elections in March 1983 to expand his parliamentary majority.
Schroeder’s shock announcement followed news that voters in NRW had kicked the SPD out of the state government after 39 years in power.
Results at 1800 GMT put the conservative Christian Democrats at 45.2 percent, above the SPD’s 37.0 percent, and enough to win control of a region Schroeder’s party has ruled since 1966.
Chancellor takes blame
Once an SPD stronghold dominated by the coal and steel industry, NRW has fallen on hard times.
Unemployment in the state, which borders on the Netherlands and Belgium and where one in five Germans live, recently pushed above the one million mark to a post-war high.
Voters have blamed Schroeder’s controversial labor market reforms, which included jobless benefit cuts, for their woes.
The projections showed the Greens party, which were junior coalition partners to the SPD in the NRW government, winning 6.1 percent. The CDU’s likely coalition partners, the liberal Free Democrats, stood at 6.3 percent, giving them an absolute majority of 51.5 percent.
The result strengthens the hand of CDU party leader Angela Merkel, who now stands a good chance of running against Schroeder in a bid to become Germany’s first woman chancellor.
“If the SPD thinks there is a need for early elections, I can only say that every day that the SPD-Greens are not ruling is a good day for Germany,” Merkel told German television. “But the SPD and Greens have to present their plan on how they want to organize that.”
May have economic impact
The prospect of early elections was expected to boost German stocks on Monday. Brokers said foreign investors would be drawn by the hope that a victory for the CDU could mean more far-reaching economic reforms.
Some analysts said Schroeder might be hoping to catch the conservatives off-guard with his announcement. Despite the convincing victory in NRW and gains in other recent state elections, the CDU remains divided at the national level and Merkel is not viewed as a charismatic leader.
Others saw it as a bid to silence left-wingers in the party who have been clamoring for a change in direction, including a rollback of Schroeder’s reforms and the introduction of new worker-friendly policies.
“It’s sensational. I almost didn’t believe it,” said Uwe Andersen, a political scientist at Ruhr University in Bochum.
“The only rational explanation I can think of is that someone from the SPD’s left wing signaled to [SPD leader Franz] Muentefering that they would not support the government’s current policy.”
Regardless, Schroeder faces an uphill battle. The SPD has now seen its support decline in nine consecutive state elections.
NRW was the last German state ruled by a coalition of the SPD and Greens, leaving the federal partnership in Berlin as the last “Red-Green” alliance.
