Berlin, Dec 16 (EFE).- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost the vote of no confidence in the German Parliament on Monday, leading to early general elections scheduled for Feb. 23.
A majority of 394 out of 717 deputies voted no-confidence, 116 abstained and 207 voted for his continuity, announced Bärbel Bas, lower house speaker.
The deputies who reaffirmed their confidence in Scholz belonged to his party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), but also included a deputy of the far-right Alternative for (Afd), who said it would be worse if the leader of the Christian Democratic opposition, Friedrich Merz, who leads the polls, came to power.
The Greens, who have 117 lawmakers in the chamber, had said they would abstain to ensure the Chancellor lost the vote and Parliament could be dissolved.
Scholz had already announced his intention to lose Monday’s vote in November after the coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals collapsed and the latter were expelled, leaving a minority government.
In his speech before the vote, the chancellor framed the snap election as a referendum on the government’s economic policies at a time of deepening recession in and growing uncertainty worldwide.
Scholz argued that the government should be allowed to take on more debt to finance massive investments in infrastructure and security to revive the economy and protect the country from the threat posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In his rebuttal, Merz accused the chancellor of failing to keep his promises to modernize the army in the wake of the war in Ukraine and of plunging the country into an economic crisis whose solution cannot be to mortgage the future of future generations with more debt.
After losing the vote, Scholz was on his way to Bellevue Palace to meet with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to ask him to dissolve parliament.
The president has until Jan. 6 to decide and is expected to hold a round of s with the leaders of the democratic parties.
The Constitution stipulates that there must be a maximum of two months between the dissolution of the Parliament and the date of the new elections, but the date on which all political forces are working, agreed upon by the government and the opposition precisely at Steinmeier’s request, is Feb. 23. EFE
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