General Newspaper Mainz
Mainz (ots)
Seldom has there been such an emotional argument in the Bundestag as this Friday, and the opposition brought out heavy verbal artillery. CDU, CSU and left accuse the traffic light coalition of an attack on democracy, there is talk of election manipulation; the insinuation came from Munich that the SPD, Greens and FDP wanted to muzzle the south of the republic. Will we soon be in the US, where the states have been cheating and cheating at whim for years in order to rob the other side of their election chances? No. Anyone who says something like that is talking nonsense. What the Bundestag decided on Friday with the votes of the traffic light coalition is an overdue and far-reaching electoral law reform. It is fair, creates the same conditions for everyone, as required by the Basic Law. However, it is a reform with side effects that will be discussed later.
First of all, it is a big step forward that the Bundestag is being reduced from the current 736 to 630 MPs. Of course, the downsizing could have been even more radical, after all, the previous benchmark of the House is 598. It has not been reached for a long time due to the escalating number of overhang and compensation mandates. The slight lifting of the lid is a response to those who have now feared a large number of orphaned constituencies. After the reform, there will be directly elected candidates who, despite their success, do not win a mandate because their party’s second vote result does not show it. Constitutionally, that’s fine – a highly relative majority of sometimes less than 20 percent does not give rise to a legal entitlement to a Bundestag mandate.
On the other hand, the fact that the coalition pressed the end of the basic mandate clause into the draft law in the last few meters is problematic. This ensures the parliamentary existence of the Left Party, it acts as a species protection for regional plants in the party landscape. This has not harmed democracy in the past decades. Nevertheless, the basic mandate clause has its downside: It is unfair to those whose votes are distributed relatively evenly across the republic and therefore have to face the five percent clause without any back doors.
The fact that the Union is now calling out “fraud” is not without a certain irony. She herself pointed out the legal problems of the clause during the parliamentary deliberations. The strategists apparently lost sight of the fact that the CSU could also benefit from this protection of species. There is another reason why the Union needs to take a good look at its own nose. For many years in government responsibility, she did not manage to get a majority-capable reform of the electoral law on the way. All attempts failed due to resistance from the CSU, which was not willing to give up even one of its direct mandates in order to reduce the size of parliament. This Bavarian egotism has now taken its revenge.
It’s your own fault, you could now call in the direction of the Union and leave it at that. However, the scenario that a regional party wins 30 or 40 constituencies and is still kicked out of the Bundestag is not conducive to acceptance of parliamentary democracy. This could be remedied by allowing list connections. After its success, the traffic light coalition was mainly supposed to make a contribution to this. Union and left want to go before the Federal Constitutional Court. That’s their right and it’s good if Karlsruhe has the last word here. Only a decision by the highest court can bring peace to this poisoned debate. There is still enough time before the next federal election.
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Original content from: Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz, transmitted by news aktuell
