Germany faces an autumn of intense

German elections have thrown some sort of surprise. Fact that Christian democratic Union (CDU) has just got only three more seats as compared to Social democratic party (SPD) is a surprise in itself.

Blame it to Germany's ailing economy which has led to a record 11.2 per cent unemployment, and the results of the by-elections and poll forecasts, which had almost uniformly gone against the SPD, the CDU, headed by Ms Angela Merkel, should have thrashed the SPD.

The results reflect a remarkable fight back by SPD's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who said that he would make every effort to continue in office. "If the voters," he said, made it so clear that they did not want Ms Merkel, "then we also have the task of fulfilling the voters' wish that Gerhard Schroeder should remain Chancellor."

Whether he will succeed in his bid or whether Ms Merkel will beat him to the post will depend on how adept they prove themselves to be in the coalition building. With both parties having won seats that fall far short of a workable majority, they will have to find allies from the ranks of the Free Democrats who won 61 seats, the Left Party which won 54 and the Green Party with its tally of 51. Alliance with any one of them will not help because the strength of the last Bundestag was 598 and that of present one may be a few more as the number of seats in each Parliament varies by a few since Germany's proportional representation system makes for a small margin of difference, plus or minus, every time.

Since both the SPD and the CDU have indicated that they will not have anything to do with the Left Party, which consists of former Communists and those in the SPD who have broken away from the latter because it has trimmed its welfare-State-oriented agenda, the choice will have to be between the Free Democrats, who, despite their ties with the CDU, may be willing for a bargain with the SPD and the Green Party which, though oriented towards the SPD, has its own political agenda.

In short, what Germany faces is an autumn of intense, and perhaps bitter, negotiations making for a winter of uncertainty. This has not been a result of voters' apathy; the turnout was 77.7 percent. The reason seems to have been their difficulty in choosing between the CDU's promise of accelerated economic reforms and the mending of ties with the United States, strained by, among other things, Chancellor Schröder's vocal opposition to the Iraq War, and the SPD's projection of Germany as a leader of Europe and a counterweight to the US. The message that comes through is simple.

A country's stability depends on the nature of its political process and not its electoral system. The outcome in Germany clearly shows that its system of proportional representation is not the guarantor of stability that it had been made out to be.