After several weeks of upheaval, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a huge confidence vote on Monday, marking the start of early elections for the European largest economy on February 23rd now.
The vote in the parliament, which Scholz had expected to lose, actually empowered President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to dissolve the legislature and formally call for new polls. It came after a long and heated debate during which bitter accusations were hurled across the aisle, suggesting a near-future election campaign.
Scholz, 66, is currently behind in the polls even compared to the conservative party leader Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union party of former chancellor Angela Merkel. After more than three years in power, Scholz was thrown into crisis when the brittle coalition of three parties collapsed on November 6-the same day Donald Trump was elected to the White House for a new term.
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Germany’s political chaos is coming as the country seeks to revive a struggling economy battered by high energy prices and strong competition from China. The city faces daunting challenges, not only in dealing with Russia over the Ukraine war but also with the uncertainties entailed by Trump’s looming return concerning future NATO and trade relations.
Those threats were the subjects of conversation at a brooding debate with Scholz, Merz, and other party leaders before the vote in the lower house, where 207 Members of Parliament voted for Scholz, 394 did not, and 116 abstained. After Scholz laid out plans for heavy expenditures on security, social welfare, and business, Merz demanded to know why he had not taken those measures in the past, inquiring: “Were you on another planet?”.
According to Scholz, previous CDU-led governments mostly left the status of armed forces “in a deplorable state,” but his government had increased the spending on arms. He therefore said, “It is high time to invest in Germany,” warning that “a highly armed nuclear power Russia is waging war in Europe just two hours away.” But Merz replied that “one of the biggest economic crises of the postwar era” had been left by Scholz to the country.
The chancellor’s assorted coalition of Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP) came under attack from recently appointed Merz, who has no government leadership experience but argues that he did practice law as a corporate lawyer. That full-blown row over fiscal and economic issues erupted when the chancellor fired his FDP finance minister, Christian Lindner on November 6.