Government

The Government of Germany consists of three significant wings, the legislature, the executive
and the judiciary represented by the Federal Parliament, the Federal Government and the Federal
Constitutional Court, respectively. The President is the formal executive head of the State elected for a
term of five years. He appoints the Federal Chancellor (Prime Minister) and his Cabinet. The Chancellor
is the real head of the Government elected by a majority vote of the Bundestag. He is responsible for the
initiation and implementation of the government policy. He can be removed from office only by an
absolute majority of the Bundestag coupled with an assured majority for the election of another candidate
to the post. The German Parliament has the Bundestag as its Lower House (Federal Diet) and the
Bundesrat as the Upper House (Federal Council). The Lower House or the Bundestag is the
supreme democratic organ of the country. Since 1999, the Bundestag has had its seat at the
Reichstag Building in Berlin. The Bundestag is elected by the people every 4 years through
"general, direct, free, equal and secret elections", as stated in the Basic Law or the German
Constitution. All citizens above the age of 18 are eligible to cast their vote. The most significant
tasks performed by the Bundestag are the adoption of the legislative process, scrutiny of the
government and its work, deciding on the federal budget and deployment of the Bundeswehr
(Federal Armed Forces) outside Germany and the election of the German Federal Chancellor.
The German Bundestag is the most important legislative organ as it is entitled to legislate on all
laws that fall within the sphere of authority of the German Federation. The President and Vice-
Presidents of the German Bundestag collectively constitute its Presidium. They however, cannot
be dismissed from office by a decision of the Bundestag. Members of the Presidium meet
regularly each week when the Bundestag is having its sessions to discuss questions relevant to
the management of the Parliament. The matters in which it is involved include the personnel
decisions of the Administration of the German Bundestag and the conclusion of important
contracts. Public relation issues are also discussed in the Presidium. Judiciary of Germany is the
basis of the maintenance of rules and the German government in the country. The Judiciary of
Germany is based on the concept of Reachtstaat, a concept of granting equal justice to all the
citizens of Germany and to treat one and all equally irrespective of religion or sex. The
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government of Germany is not higher than the law and the government decision can be modified
according to the need of the hour to meet out the best judgment to the people of Germany. The
German court functions on the basis of Roman law principles, whereby the cases are solved
according to some comprehensive system of legal codes rather than reference to similar case
histories. The judges in the German court are specially trained to deal with the somewhat abstract
code of law and they are in most cases professional from different backgrounds that specialize
and train in the field of law. The German court is subdivided into the Ordinary Court, the
Specialized Court and the Federal Constitutional Court. This Judiciary of Germany is upheld by
the three courts, divided into four subcategories. The ordinary court is concerned with cases
concerning civil and criminal types. The specialized court on the other hand deals with the
social, fiscal, administrative and patent issues. The Constitutional Court is concerned with
constitutional understanding judicial reviews. The Federal court of Germany deals with the Basic
Law and is the highest court of Germany.

The president of Germany is Christian Wulff

President of Germany Christian Wulff

was elected President of Germany on 30 June 2010, when he won 625 of 1242 votes in the third
ballot of the Federal Convention. He became Germany's youngest president at the age of 51.
Wulff was sworn in on 2 July 2010 in front of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. His main
contender in the election was Joachim Gauck, a civil rights activist from East Germany and a
former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives. He not a member of any party, Gauck was
nominated by the opposition SPD and Greens as their presidential candidate on 3 June. Wulff
was succeeded as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony by David McAllister.Wulff's candidacy for
President of Germany in the 2010 presidential election was formally confirmed by Angela
Merkel, Guido Westerwelle and Horst Seehofer, the heads of the CDU, FDP and CSU parties,
during the evening of 3 June 2010.

Independence: 18 January 1871 (German Empire unification); divided into four zones
of occupation (UK, US, USSR, and France) in 1945 following World War II; Federal Republic
of Germany (FRG or West Germany) proclaimed 23 May 1949 and included the former UK, US,
and French zones; German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) proclaimed 7 October
1949 and included the former USSR zone; West Germany and East Germany unified 3 October

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1990; all four powers formally relinquished rights 15 March 1991; notable earlier dates: 10
August 843 (Eastern Francis established from the division of the Carolingian Empire); 2
February 962 (crowning of OTTO I, recognized as the first Holy Roman Emperor).

The West German system of government, outlined in the Basic Law, reflects in
particular a desire to transcend the interwar period of democratic instability and dictatorship. A
federal system of government, considered vital to a stable, constitutional democracy, was put in
place as a direct response to lessons learned from the Nazis' misuse of centralized structures.
After four years of Allied occupation, the FRG was established in 1949. The country attained
sovereignty in 1955 when the Allies transferred responsibility for national security to the newly
formed armed forces, the Bundeswehr. Creating a climate of political stability was a primary
goal of the authors of West Germany's Basic Law. Among other things, the Basic Law
established the supremacy of political parties in the system of government. In the resulting "party
state," all major government policies emanated from the organizational structure of the political
parties. In the decades since 1949, West Germany's parties have tended toward the middle of the
political spectrum, largely because both the historical experience with fascism and the existence
of communist East Germany greatly diminished the appeal of either extreme. This reigning
political consensus, challenged briefly in the late 1960s by the student protest movement and in
the early 1980s by economic recession, has led many observers to judge the "Bonn model" a
success. However, it remains an open question whether the legal, economic, and political
structures of the past will serve the unified Germany as well in the future.

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