Germans face prospect of early election

The chairman of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats today suggested that national elections should be brought forward by a year after the party suffered a stinging defeat in the country’s most populous state.

Parliamentary elections were expected to be held in the second half of 2006. However, Social Democratic Party leader Franz Muentefering said they should now be brought forward to later this year.

Muentefering spoke out following the conservative opposition's win in North Rhine-Westphalia.

“The chancellor and I have decided … to propose that we aim for parliamentary elections this fall,” Muentefering told ZDF television. “Schroeder is the chancellor and the candidate for chancellor.”

“We think that, now that the Christian Democrats’ win in North Rhine-Westphalia has made things even clearer in the upper house, this structural stalemate between the lower and upper houses must be cleared up.”

Victory for the conservatives will increase their majority in the upper house of parliament, which represents Germany’s 16 states, but leave them short of a two-thirds majority that would allow them to block all government plans.

Germany’s last national elections were held in September 2002, when Schroeder narrowly won re-election in a coalition with the Greens.