BERLIN: The checks and balances Germans imposed on themselves after the Nazi era have stifled the country for years and are now complicating Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s plans for early elections. Even though all parties and most voters want new elections, constitutional barriers to dissolving parliament are standing in the way.

Only President Horst Koehler can dissolve parliament and Schroeder has devised an unorthodox plan to lose a confidence vote deliberately in July to pave the way for polls a year ahead of schedule.

But Koehler, who won the presidency with opposition conservative backing, might use his veto to block Schroeder and rule the Social Democratic chancellor’s move unconstitutional.

The odds on this happening may be long, but analysts are not ruling it out.

“British prime ministers can wake up one morning, decide to call Buckingham Palace and ask the Queen for an appointment to dissolve parliament,” said Karl-Heinz Nassmacher, a political scientist at Oldenburg University.

“The German constitution is very complicated and chancellors don’t have that power.”

Even if Koehler doesn’t balk, some analysts say backbenchers facing abruptly shortened careers in parliament will challenge any early election with arguments, supported by constitutional scholars, and ask the constitutional court to overrule Koehler.

It could be messy.

The authors of Germany’s post-war constitution made it so difficult to dissolve parliament to prevent a repeat of the chaos of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s that led to the Nazis under Adolf Hitler.

Two post-war West German parliaments were dissolved — in 1972 and 1983. In 1983, President Karl Carstens at first resisted Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s plan to deliberately lose a no confidence vote before reluctantly approving it.

The constitutional court then rejected an appeal against the no-confidence vote but set limits on such votes in the future — which has prompted speculation Schroeder’s bid may fail in 2005.

The dilemma surrounding the elections, called after a heavy poll defeat for Schroeder’s party in its former stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia, also illustrates why Germany is so paralysed and unable to enact reforms most sides support.

“Germany is almost impossible to govern and hard to reform because there are just so many constitutional checks and balances,” said Nassmacher.

“The men who wrote the post-war constitution had a different set of problems on their minds. They were influenced by the experiences of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. Structural reforms and unemployment were not issues then.”

Another set of safeguards set up after the Hitler era that has been a big impediment to economic and political reforms in Germany can be found in the permanent struggles between the upper and lower houses.

Schroeder’s Social Democrats control the lower house, the Bundestag. But the opposition Christian Democrats have a lock on the upper house — the Bundesrat — that can veto most laws.

The CDU have strangled many of Schroeder’s reform efforts in the states’ chamber — just as the SPD had used its majority in the Bundesrat before 1998 as a lethal weapon to bring down the last conservative government under Kohl.

“Schroeder has shown us how it is almost impossible to get any meaningful reforms passed in Germany,” said Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University. Schroeder’s SPD had a majority in both houses for just three months in 1998/99.

“The Bundesrat was turned into an instrument of power politics for the opposition to block the government,” he added.

Germany’s 16 federal states also have a big say in other decisions taken in Berlin — another legacy of the country’s Nazi past. State representatives hold seats on commissions and other decentralised bodies. Efforts to streamline this cumbersome decision-making process have failed repeatedly.

The new elections are the latest sign of Germany tugging at the restraints imposed after World War Two.

“If Koehler says ‘no’ or the constitutional court overturns his ‘yes’, Schroeder can simply carry on as chancellor until next year,” said Nassmacher. “Schroeder is shrewd enough to know Koehler will get the blame if that happens. He can say he tried to dissolve parliament but was tripped up by Koehler.”—Reuters