ALLIANCE FO§ DEMOCRACY

65 years of the Basic Law, and 65 years of dictatorship in Germany

On 23rd May, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany was promulgated as the legal basis of the state – it came into force on 24th May 1949. That was 65 years ago. Since that time, the elites of the country have let their politicians do as they wish, while the people suffered under the partition of Germany, the decline of the currency and the economic roller coaster rides. The right of co-determination in the legal structures of the country did not exist; nor after the reunification, when Chancellor Kohl should have developed or proposed a constitution for Germany. The Basic Law served the purposes of a sham democracy, which we still have until today.

The Basic Law came about without the co-determination of the people. Federal President Norbert Lammert (CDU) nevertheless described it at one ceremony as a “stroke of luck”. And this on the very day on which the Bundestag had also passed the nonsensical and unfeasible pension law, which will hardly benefit the people. This however can only have been intended as a joke. Because the empty phrases of the “Basic Law, as the foundations of the young democracy in Germany were designated as the Constitution”, which can hardly apply. A legal basis which establishes the democracy of a country, but was not created by democratic participation, can hardly be democratic.

The Basic Law therefore remains until today only a provisional measure, which must be changed urgently, and finally. This requires a new legal order for Germany, which is based on democratic political education and the co-determination of the people.

At the ceremony of the Basic Law, which was attended by representatives of the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, several members of the government, including Angela Merkel, and also representatives of the Federal Constitutional Court, Lammert lauded in his speech the diversity of the Basic Law. The Iranian-born writer and qualified orientalist Navid Kermani, who likes to interfere with ludicrous questions, criticised in his speech several facets of the Basic Law, and pointed out “mutilations”, such as the amendments to Paragraph 16, that would have buried the “right of asylum” for persecuted people.

These amendments to the asylum law form part of the 59 amendments which have been made to the Basic Law since 1949. The examination of the legal implementation and the observance of the basic law requirements unfortunately remained unaffected. All German governments also failed to introduce a German constitution by a popular vote, which would put an end to the dictatorship of the parties. When Norbert Lammert says today, “Germany can only congratulate itself on this Constitution, because it has proven itself to be the “uncontested basis” of democratic co-existence in this country”, Norbert Lammert is speaking for the benefit of those who until today still continue to deny and conceal the illegitimacy of how the Basic Law came about, and also prevent any real changes for the better.

It remains to be asked why President Joachim Gauck did not give the speech at this ceremony. The answer was provided by the “Bild”, which reported on the dispute between Lammert and Gauck, in the course of which the westerner Lammert did not believe that the easterner Gauck was probably not able to make a decent speech suitable to the occasion. Let us hope that Gauck gets his chance on 7th October 2014, when the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic would have celebrated its anniversary.