{"id":26251,"date":"2024-12-28T08:19:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T08:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=26251"},"modified":"2024-12-28T08:21:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T08:21:30","slug":"german-president-starts-the-countdown-to-early-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/12\/german-president-starts-the-countdown-to-early-election\/","title":{"rendered":"German president\u00a0dissolves parliament, starts countdown to snap polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; Germany&#8217;s head of state\u00a0started the countdown to a general election on Friday by dissolving the country&#8217;s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have decided to dissolve the 20th German Bundestag to fix the date for an early election for February 23,&#8221; said\u00a0President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, adding that &#8220;political stability in Germany is a precious asset.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Steinmeier&#8217;s decision comes after Chancellor\u00a0Olaf Scholz\u00a0lost a vote of confidence in the legislature on December 16.<\/p>\n<p>Steinmeier set the date for the new election for February 23, reported DW.<\/p>\n<p>The parliamentary leaders of Scholz&#8217;s\u00a0Social Democratic Party\u00a0(SPD)\u00a0and the conservative opposition\u00a0Christian Democratic Union\u00a0(CDU)\u00a0had previously agreed on the date.<\/p>\n<p>Recent opinion polls have the CDU, headed by Friedrich Merz, holding a lead of around 10 points over the center-left SPD suggesting a tough bid for reelection for Scholz.<\/p>\n<p>The populist, far-right\u00a0Alternative for Germany (AfD)\u00a0has been polling strongly and has nominated\u00a0Alice Weidel\u00a0as its candidate for chancellor.<\/p>\n<p>But other parties have so far refused to work with the AfD, meaning Weidel\u00a0has little to no chance of taking the job.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the key issues facing Germany include immigration, kick-starting the economy and how best to support Ukraine as it battles Russia&#8217;s continued invasion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hatred and violence must have no place in this election campaign, nor denigration or intimidation&#8230; all this is poison for democracy,&#8221; Steinmeier said.<\/p>\n<p>The president also told political parties and voters of the challenges the next government will face given the &#8220;economically unstable situation&#8230; the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine&#8221; and the ongoing debates over immigration and climate change.<\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; Germany&#8217;s head of state\u00a0started the countdown to a general election on Friday by dissolving the country&#8217;s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":26252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,194,244,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world","category-europe","category-headline"],"views":45,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26255,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251\/revisions\/26255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}