Court clears way for poll

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 8

Court clears way for poll

NZPA-Reuter Karlsruhe West Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court yesterday cleared the way for a General'Election on March 6 and endorsed Dr Helmut Kohl’s grounds for forcing .an early poll. The court, ruling by a margin of six to two, dismissed petitions from four deputies which argued that a dissolution of Parliament was unconstitutional because Dr Kohl's coalition still had a majority after losing a contrived vote of no-confidence on December 17.’ • <•’ The presiding Judge, Wolfgang Zeidler, justified the verdict by pointing to the deep splits in Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s Free Democratic Party caused by its change of coalition partners last autumn. He said that Kohl had good reason to believe when he

sought elections in December that his alliance with the Free Democrats, might not last until the next regular poll in 1984. The Chancellor was. there-

fore justified in deliberately losing the vote of confidence, by asking his supporters to abstain. Judge Zeidler said. The decision of the Federal President, Dr Karl Carstens. to dissolve Parliament and call elections was also correct, the Court ruled. The widely expected verdict was greeted with relief by Government and Opposition leaders, who have already begun campaigning hard for the March. 6 poll. The Social Democratic opposition candidate for Chancellor. Hans-Jochen Vogel, said that the ruling had ended “a chain of embarrassments which we owe to Messrs Kohl and Genscher.'’ The Health Minister, Mr Heiner Geissler. general secretary of Dr Kohl's Christian Democratic Union, said that the verdict had given

Constitutional authority to the Party's pledge of an early poll. The two dissenting judges said in a minority decision that they had considered the dissolution unconstitutional. They directed their criticism more at the use. of Parliamentary procedure than at Dr Kohl or Dr Carstens. Judge Zeidler warned against possible future abuse of the Constitutional process adopted by Dr Kohl, saying that a Government should not use a confidence vote to force elections unless its policies genuinely did not enjoy a Parliamentary majority. To support the verdict he traced in detail the splits, which h.ad taken place in the full Democrats since it deserted the Social Democratic Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, and voted Dr Kohl into power on October 1.