[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Olli Salmi]

At 18:32 +0200 20.11.2001, Markus Schulze wrote:
>Article 81 section 1 sentence 2 of the constitution says that the
>chancellor can combine a vote of confidence with another motion.

Thanks. It's not very clear on the two different majorities.

>You wrote (20 Nov 2001):
>> Why should it be made unattractive? Of course the Prime Minister
>> has an edge but new elections are better than a coup d'état
>> [as Markus Schulze points out in his posting.]
>
>I agree with you. Early elections should be possible. Early
>elections are better than a coup d'etat. However, the Swedish
>option doesn't make early elections impossible. It only
>guarantees that the right to dissolve the parliament cannot be
>misused by the Prime Minister who would otherwise dissolve the
>parliament to get a full new term whenever the opinion polls
>are promising.

They do it in Britain all the time. I understand the Danes often do it too,
but this time the Prime Minister lost. I've always thought the Swedish way
is clumsy, but that's probably not very logical.

Here are the results from Denmark:
http://www.inm.dk/res20nov2001/la000.htm
The columns are party, votes, percentage of votes, seats, district seats,
additional seats (now and last time for each). At the bottom eligible
voters, votes, blank votes, invalid votes, turn-out, percentage of invalid
votes. Perhaps they have it in English somewhere.

Olli Salmi