Quotes of the Day

Let the people have their say. That was the message in Berlin last week when German President Horst Köhler agreed to dissolve parliament, paving the way for a snap election, expected on Sept. 18. "The people should be able to decide the future policies of our country,"

Köhler said. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will be pleased — he engineered the poll by deliberately losing a confidence vote in parliament on July 1 — but at least two parliamentary deputies plan to challenge Köhler's decision in the Constitutional Court. If the election does take place, conventional wisdom is that Schröder will lose. A poll by Election Research Group confirmed that the new leftist alliance — Linkspartei.pds, a coalition of disgruntled left-wingers and eastern German reformed communists — is polling 12% nationally. It's also the strongest party in the east, at 34%. The conservative cdu and its sister party, the csu, are running at 44% nationally, compared to 24% for the ruling spd.

If the cdu does win, the strength of Linkspartei.pds in the east could make the party's majority so slim that it's forced into a coalition with the spd. The result: political stalemate. "It could be that the balance of power is even narrower," says Christian Pestalozza, a law professor at Berlin's Free University.

• WILLIAM BOSTON
• Chancellor Schröder gets his way as new elections are called in Germany