Election of the German Federal President in 2012

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Election of the German Federal President in 2012
Candidates Votes in%
Joachim Gauck
  
 79.9
Beate Klarsfeld
  
 10.2
Olaf Rose
  
 0.2
Abstentions
  
 8.7
Place of choice: the plenary hall in the Reichstag building

On March 18, 2012 , the 15th Federal Assembly in the Reichstag building in Berlin elected Joachim Gauck as the eleventh Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany in the first ballot .

Background and election date

On February 17, 2012, the tenth Federal President Christian Wulff resigned from his office . After his direct predecessor Horst Köhler, he was the second Federal President to end his term of office with immediate effect. For the reasons that prompted Wulff to do so, see Wulff affair . After Wulff's resignation, the official business of the Federal President was temporarily carried out by the President of the German Federal Council , Horst Seehofer (CSU).

According to Article 54, Paragraph 4 of the Basic Law (GG), the Federal Assembly had to meet to elect the Federal President no later than 30 days after the resignation.

The members of the 15th Federal Assembly to be elected by the Saarland Landtag were determined by the already dissolved Landtag , whose electoral period according to Art. 67 Para. 1 Clause 2 of the Saarland Constitution does not end until the Landtag meets, which will be new on March 25, 2012 was chosen . The North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament had been dissolved since March 14th, and the electoral period there also ended at this point, but the delegates were determined on February 28th.

The 17th German Bundestag was the first Bundestag to take part in two federal assemblies. The state parliaments of Bavaria , Hesse and Lower Saxony had to elect delegates for three federal assemblies within just one electoral period.

As head of the Federal Assembly ( § 8 BPäsWahlG), the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert ( CDU ), remembered in his opening address March 18 as a day that "like few others stands in a remarkable line of tradition in German history": Proclamation the Republic of Mainz in 1793, the beginning of the barricade fight during the March Revolution in Berlin in 1848 and election of the People's Chamber in 1990 . Lammert's joy about the “lucky coincidence” of a federal presidential election on March 18, after which “- the normal case provided for in the constitution, assuming that we return to the usual five-year rhythm - [...] in future every federal president on March 18 could be elected or sworn in ”, was utopian from the start. It was foreseeable that the term of office of the Federal President elected on March 18, 2012 would begin on the same day and end five years later on March 18, 2017. However, the Federal Assembly must meet no later than thirty days before the end of the Federal President's term of office, Article 54.4 of the Basic Law. The next one therefore took place on February 12, 2017 and the swearing-in of the new President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was not on the last day of his predecessor's term of office, but on March 22, 2017.

Candidates

  • Joachim Gauck (2011)

  • Beate Klarsfeld (2012)

  • Olaf Rose (2011)

According to Article 54.1 of the Basic Law, anyone who has the right to vote in the Bundestag and has reached the age of 40 as a German citizen can be elected as Federal President. Any member of the Federal Assembly can submit election proposals; the written declaration of consent of the proposed person must be attached ( Section 9, Paragraph 1 of the BPäsWahlG ).

Joachim Gauck

The non-party civil rights activist and theologian Joachim Gauck was proposed as a joint candidate on February 19, 2012 by the parties CDU , CSU , SPD , FDP and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen . The SSW and the Free Voters also announced that they would support Gauck.

Gauck was already a candidate for the 2010 election of the German Federal President . There it was set up by the SPD and the Greens and also received approval from the Free Voters and the SSW, but was defeated in the third ballot by Christian Wulff, who was supported by the two Union parties and the FDP.

The parties behind Gauck provided 1111 out of a total of 1240 electoral women and men in the Federal Assembly . Joachim Gauck was ultimately elected with 991 of 1,228 valid votes.

Beate Klarsfeld

The independent journalist and activist for coming to terms with the National Socialist past, Beate Klarsfeld , was unanimously nominated as a candidate on February 27, 2012 by the board of the Left Party , which was represented in the Federal Assembly by 124 voters. On March 5, the Saxon state parliament elected Klarsfeld as a member of the Federal Assembly at the suggestion of the left-wing parliamentary group.

Olaf Rose

Olaf Rose , military historian and author of historical revisionist writings, speaker at right-wing extremist events and former member of the National Board of the NPD , was nominated on March 5, 2012 by his party, which was represented in the Federal Assembly with three voters.

Federal Assembly

Distribution of seats in the 15th Federal Assembly
         
A total of 1240 seats

The Federal Assembly was composed as follows:

Political party
Total members		 Members of the
Federation		 Member
countries		 proportion of
CDU / CSU 486 237 249 39.2%
SPD 331 146 185 26.7%
Alliance 90 / The Greens 147 068 079 11.9%
FDP 136 093 043 11.0%
The left 124 076 048 10.0%
Free voters 010 000 010 0.8%
NPD 003 000 003 0.2%
Pirate party 002 000 002 0.2%
SSW 001 000 001 0.1%
total 1240 620 620 100%

According to Article 54 (5) of the Basic Law, whoever “receives the votes of the majority of the members of the Federal Assembly” is elected in the first or second ballot. This corresponds to at least 621 votes. In the third ballot, the candidate with the most votes is elected. With that

the absolute majority required in the first two ballots. In the third ballot, the candidate with the most votes is elected.

Election result

Joachim Gauck was elected in the first ballot with 991 votes (the parties supporting him had a total of 1111 members in the Federal Assembly). Beate Klarsfeld received 126 votes and Olaf Rose 3 votes. After the election results were announced in front of the plenary session of the Federal Assembly, Gauck declared that the election would be accepted. The swearing-in took place on March 23, 2012 in a joint meeting of the Bundestag and Bundesrat . Since the office of Federal President was vacant, Gauck's term of office as Federal President began with the acceptance of the election.

Ballot candidate Number of votes proportion of supporter
First ballot Joachim Gauck 991 79.9% CDU / CSU / SPD / Greens / FDP / Free Voters / SSW
Beate Klarsfeld 126 10.2% The left
Olaf Rose 3 0.2% NPD
Abstentions 108 8.7%
Invalid votes 4th 0.3%
Not present 8th 0.6%
Joachim Gauck was thus elected Federal President.
Remarks:
  1. ↑ The proportion relates to the total number of members of the Federal Assembly (1240), since a majority of the total number of members was required in the first ballot (621 or more). The absence of eight members of the Federal Assembly was irrelevant. The votes not cast are neither invalid nor an abstention.

Trivia

The MP Udo Pastörs (NPD) of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament , from which he had already withdrawn immunity for the purpose of criminal prosecution , claimed that parliamentary immunity still protects him from criminal prosecution as long as he is still a member of the 15th Federal Assembly at the Federal Constitutional Court against their course and results. The Rostock Higher Regional Court did not follow suit .

Web links

 Wikinews: Joachim Gauck is the eleventh German President  - message
Commons : 2012 Germany Federal Assembly  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Minutes of the 15th Federal Assembly, p. 4 (A)
  2. ↑ Minutes of the 15th Federal Assembly, p. 5 (A)
  3. ↑ a b "The office of Federal President begins with the expiry of the term of office of his predecessor, but not before the President of the Bundestag receives the declaration of acceptance." ( § 10 BPäsWahlG). Since the term of office of the predecessor ended with his immediate resignation, the term of office of the elected person begins immediately upon acceptance of the election ( Scientific Service of the Bundestag: Current term. The 14th Federal Assembly on June 30, 2010 ( Memento from September 19, 2011 on the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 62 kB); quote: "The term of office of the new head of state begins with the receipt of the declaration of acceptance by the President of the Bundestag and lasts five years."). The oath required according to Art. 56 GG does not mark the time of taking office. Also Maunz / Dürig, Basic Law , 56th Supplementary Delivery 2009, Rn 2 to Art. 56 GG: “According to Art. 56 Sentence 1, taking the oath and taking office are closely related in time, but are not mutually dependent. According to the constitution, it is conceivable that the newly elected Federal President is officially active before he is sworn in (because his term of office has already begun) and that the oath is taken before the term of office begins (i.e. during the the term of office of the predecessor). But the last-mentioned course of events at least stands in the way of aspects of the political tact compared to the predecessor. [...] In no case does Art. 56 itself make any provision regarding the beginning of the Federal President's term of office. "
  4. ↑ http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btp/18/18223.pdf
  5. ↑ Parties agree: Joachim Gauck is to become the new Federal President. In: Spiegel Online . February 19, 2012, accessed February 19, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Federal President election: SSW supports Gauck. (No longer available online.) South Schleswig Voter Association, February 20, 2012, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 20, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / ssw.de  
  7. ↑ Hope for non-partisan candidates with popular support. February 20, 2012, accessed February 20, 2012 .
  8. ↑ Left Party nominates Klarsfeld as a candidate. In: FAZ.NET . February 27, 2012, accessed February 27, 2012 .
  9. ↑ Saxony's electorate for the Federal Assembly - Klarsfeld there. Retrieved March 8, 2012 .
  10. ↑ APA agency report: Right-wing extremists nominate their own presidential candidate , derStandard.at of March 5, 2012.
  11. ↑ 15th Federal Assembly , wahlrecht.de, as of March 6, 2012
  12. ↑ Decision of August 16, 2013, 1 Ss 57/13 (62/13)