From: Gene McAloon 

On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 07:26:16 +0200, Phil Payne
 wrote:

>> The point, however, is that there was no outcry to change a system that
produced
>> such an absurd action.  In other similar systems, if the coalition fails,
new
>> elections are held. The idea that you can have a change of government just
by
>> minority parties arbitrarily changing coalition partners is the height of
>> absurdity. It is thoroughly undemocratic, yet the Germans don't seem to
care.
>
>Quite the contrary.  Both the SPD/FDP coalition and the later CDU/CSU/FDP
>coalition had in total a substantial majority of the popular vote.  Shrub
>does not even have a majority, much less a substantial one.

In making excuses for the Germans, you ignore the simple fact that their
system allowed a change in government without an election. Under slightly
different circumstances, that would be called a coup anywhere else.

It matters not at all that the new coalition still comprised a majority of
the voters. That is irrelevant. Under the German system, the party that
gets a plurality of the votes forms a coalition. Under that formula, the
Social Dems formed the coalition. The minority member of that coalition
subsequently withdrew to ally itself with the Christian Dems who had gotten
fewer votes than the Social Dems, thereby given control to the Christian
Dems. That was a mockery
of the democratic system of government and yet it is a fact that there was
no concerted effort by anyone, including the cheated public, to change an
obviously
less than democratic system.

Given that kind of thing, is it any wonder that so many elsewhere in Europe
still don't trust the Germans and their alleged commitment to democracy? Is
it any wonder that so many still can't think of Germany without also
thinking of its Nazi past?

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