Comment: The uncertainty following Friedrich Merz’s election defeat was a disgrace

It's not dishonorable for a head of government not to receive the required majority in the first round of voting. However, it is at least grossly negligent, even disastrous, not to know what will happen after the first failure. The fact that the majority party and the Bundestag administration spent hours groping in the dark is a disgrace and comes dangerously close to a state failure.

Such uncertainty is destructive because the highest organs of government didn't know how to proceed. Suddenly, they found themselves standing like oxen before the new gate of the Bundestag's rules of procedure, which stipulates a deadline for discussing nominations. Which nominations, exactly? It was clear that only Friedrich Merz would be eligible for a second round of voting. Suddenly, many things were up for debate—a second round on Friday, Thursday, or even Wednesday.

The damage suddenly seemed enormous. Merz plans to travel to Warsaw on Wednesday, and on Thursday he has countless appointments marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war and the liberation from National Socialism. Should the lamest duck in the country, the acting chancellor Olaf Scholz, take over this task? That would be truly defamatory.

Friedrich Merz must have known that not all of his coalition partners would follow his lead in the first round. How could he then believe that he would still be easily elected in the first round? How could he bet everything on it? Because it's always been this way?

How could Merz believe that everyone would follow his command?

But Merz becomes chancellor at a time when nothing is as it always was. It is a time of uncertainty, which he is exacerbating through his own behavior.

He only had to look at the federal states. Several times, a candidate has failed in the first round of voting and still become state premier. In the end, it almost always worked out – even if it took three rounds, as was the case with Kai Wegner in Berlin in 2023. Of course, he was weak at the knees by the third round at the latest, but he pulled through – and won.

That's not how the world works. Or rather, that's not how it works with Friedrich Merz. After all, in recent months, his courting of the AfD and his approval of the €500 billion debt package have caused a great deal of lasting anger and mistrust within both the SPD and the CDU. Added to that are his – and Lars Klingbeil's – ministerial decisions, which inevitably left behind disappointed losers who wanted revenge .

So it could be his Union Party arch-enemy Wegner, of all people, from whom Merz could have learned something like humility, for example, or at least courage. Because the uncertainty about the procedure following Merz's failure in the first round of voting is a sign of arrogance – and, as we all know, arrogance comes before a fall. Along the lines of: You HAVE to vote for me, Friedrich Merz. You have no alternative. So you will.

Merz has made many enemies – some have taken revenge

The election of the Prime Minister is Parliament's big moment, the moment of disappointed avengers. For many members of parliament, this election is even the only chance to follow their own conscience—or other considerations—during a legislative period. Never again, on any issue, will the public stare so captivated by a vote. Never again will they have so much power.

It was the perfect moment to shoot the candidate and his people in the face, to teach them a lesson, to send a message. To let off steam. That doesn't mean risking everything. In a later round of voting, one could always vote yes to the unpopular candidate. That's probably what the coup plotters, who didn't even want to be coup plotters, thought.

And that's exactly what happened later. But first, there was a huge shock when they discovered that the Bundestag's rules of procedure mentioned deadlines. What have I done, one or the other might have thought. The guilty conscience became almost tangible when looking at the numbers in the second round of voting: Merz received almost all of the coalition votes—325 out of 328.