Power-Share Plan Floated for German Chancellery

With Germany’s top party leaders fighting over who should be chancellor after an inconclusive election last week, one lawmaker floated a plan Saturday to rotate the top job.

The head of an influential group within Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party said the party’s Parliament members favored a power-sharing plan with the Christian Democratic Union that would let Schroeder hold office for two years before handing over to the CDU at midterm.

RTL television reported that Schroeder, 61, favors such a rotation modeled on a 1984-88 Israeli government led by Shimon Peres of the Labor Party and then Yitzhak Shamir of Likud.

Schroeder’s party won about 34% last week, just behind Angela Merkel’s CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union, which together got about 35% of the vote.

After days of unsuccessful jostling by each in hopes of building a coalition with smaller parties, the likely solution now is a “grand coalition” of the two main parties.

But a number of CDU figures rejected the power-sharing plan proposed by lawmaker Johannes Kahrs, saying there was no point even beginning talks with Schroeder’s party until it acknowledged the victory of the CDU and its sister party and their right to take over the chancellery.

“It’s a ridiculous idea,” Christian Wulff, governor of Lower Saxony state, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Although there is an Oct. 18 deadline for the new Parliament members to take their seats, some analysts and politicians say the impasse may not be resolved until December.