No confidence in Westminster republics

But Sir William behaved impeccably, and granted the double dissolution. His duty, his personal allegiance, was to his King, thus to the people. It was certainly not to the party of which he had so long been a most loyal member.

There is, of course, no such superior personal allegiance for a president. Any direct relationship with the nation or the people is meaningless and unenforceable. So the first step in Westminster republics is to codify the president's powers - to write them down. In 1999, the republicans had not thought through their preferred model. They did not even know that to stay in the Commonwealth we had to have no opposition from any one of the other 52 members of the Commonwealth.

When monarchists pointed this out we were denounced as liars. But to the embarrassment of the republicans, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth agreed with us. The republicans then tried to incorporate into their republic an ineffectual, highly flawed preservation of the conventions which presently surround the exercise of the reserve powers by the vice-regal representatives of the Crown.

In codifying the president’s powers, republicans acknowledge the president is a politician, who may well be guided by political considerations in the exercise of his powers. One so-called solution is to make the president powerless, or almost powerless. Common sense would indicate power does not exist in vacuum. If the president does not have a power, someone else does. Usually the prime minister.

Because of their bad experience with the Weimar republic, the present German constitution grants the president few powers. For example the Bundestag (the lower house) elects the chancellor. The Bundestag can also remove the chancellor - all they have to do is elect someone else under article 67. The president must do their bidding. To repeat, the president has no discretion in the appointment or dismissal of the chancellor, not even where the choice of a chancellor is not obvious, as in the case of, say, a hung legislature. This is to prevent a repetition of Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler.

However the president does have one discretion. This is now in play, and relates to the only occasion when a chancellor may obtain an early election. Article 68 provides that in the event of a vote of no confidence in the Bundestag, the president may order a general election. This is designed to avoid the instability of the Weimar Republic, which led to the Third Reich, and is the only time an early election is permissible.

One assumes this Article refers to a real vote of no confidence - otherwise it could be too easily circumvented. But on July 1, 2005, the Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, did just that, engineering an artificial vote of no confidence against the Schroeder Government. The vote of no confidence was passed 296 to 151, with 148 abstentions procured from among the Chancellor's allies. Chancellor Schroeder then asked the President, Horst Kohler, for an early election. Schroeder thinks he can win the election by reversing voting trends against his party in recent state elections. He is no doubt relying on precedents which suggest an early election after a loss of confidence favours the incumbent.

The President had 21 days to decide whether to grant an election. On July 23, the President announced to the nation: “I am convinced the constitutional conditions for dissolving parliament exist.” Which, of course, they did not. The Constitution was designed to prevent this sort of thing. Already a member of the Bundestag has announced an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

According to Reuters, few German legal experts believe the Court will go against the President. Three of the five French republics were attempts to imitate the Westminster system. All failed. France now has a system which attempts to mix Westminster with the American system. No wonder observers are talking about moving to a sixth republic.