Impeachment unlikely

Germany's Left party raised the prospect of launching impeachment proceedings against German President Christian Wulff after he rejected calls to step down over the weekend.

The Left party's legal affairs spokesman Wolfgang Neskovic said parliament should assess whether the president's phone call to the chief editor of the Bild newspaper, Kai Diekmann, may have constituted an act of attempted duress.

Wulff's lawyer said the phone message left on Diekmann's voicemail in December was only intended to delay the publication of a story about a cheap home loan Wulff obtained from a friend. But Bild said Wulff's threats were aimed at stopping the story from ever being printed.

Legally plausible - politically unrealistic

Hans Herbert von Arnim, a professor of constitutional law at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer, said he thought further investigation of the scandal was warranted.

"A German president can be prosecuted if he breaks federal law or the nation's basic law," he told Deutsche Welle. "Paragraph 240 of the criminal code is such a federal law. It prohibits duress and attempted duress."

Related allegations that Wulff failed to fully inform the parliament of Lower Saxony about the details of his public and private relationships with wealthy businesspeople when he was the state's premier were not, however, grounds for impeachment because those events occurred before he became president.

Even if past actions were considered pertinent, von Arnim said he does not expect the matter will ever be referred to the Federal Constitutional Court.

"A parliamentary majority of two-thirds is required to launch impeachment proceedings," he said. "Considering the majority is currently held by a coalition of Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats - the parties that elected the president to office in the first place - it is very unlikely that such a proposal would be initiated."

Direct or indirect?

The scandal surrounding Wulff has reignited German debate about whether the constitution should be changed to allow the people to elect the president directly.

German law currently relies on an indirect election that sees a special assembly made up of the lower house of parliament plus representatives of the states choose a president from a range of candidates nominated by political parties.

A number of former presidents including Roman Herzog and Richard von Weizsäcker have signaled a preference for direct presidential elections, arguing a direct mandate would give the office increased independence and broader democratic legitimacy.

Legal expert von Arnim said fears that a direct mandate would give the presidency too much power were exaggerated: "There is little risk of abuse because the president has little decision-making power to begin with. That's not to say the office is unimportant. Speeches and representation are needed to integrate people and keep them together."

Once again, he said, politics was the biggest obstacle to change.

"The necessary constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds majority in the upper and lower houses of parliament. Experience shows that politicians are simply not prepared to hand over control of this particular office to the people."

Lessons from the past

The reason Germany's president is elected indirectly and has such limited power can be traced back to lessons learned from the Weimar Republic.

The political system set up after the First World War gave the directly elected president extensive powers, including control over the nation's armed forces and the ability to dissolve parliament and enact emergency laws.

In addition, the president could appoint a chancellor without the support of parliament - a measure that opened the door to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1933.

Author: Rachel Gessat / sje
Editor: Michael Lawton