this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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I am actually quite happy with Germany's constitution.
What do you think about the role of your president? Would you get rid of them entirely, or would you give them more powers?
Keep them as they are. I don't think we've ever had this position seriously abused and it's a decent last line of defense ~~if~~when the brown shit hits the fan again.
Obviously they can't prevent the public hurting itself again in the long term but they can however at least mitigate that happening to some degree for a little while. That can be enough to smooth over some short-term crisis and might move people to realise their situation a bit better because it'd be a highly, highly exceptional thing for them to step in.
(For those not in the know: Next to being the representative for the state (does rememberance speeches, shakes hands, etc.), the German president handles some "administrative" stuff in the government without much say and they have the power to effectively stop the legislative until their term is over by refusing to sign new bills.
The latter has never occured and single bills have only been "vetoed" only 9 times in total. Mostly because of formal issues such as the bill not actually having been approved by the Bundesrat or bills that are obviously in conflict with the Grundgesetz and would get overturned by the judicative immediately.)
Agreed. I like how the German presidents have managed to keep an aura of respect (or so it at least seems to me) by staying out of daily politics. Here in Czechia the presidents have been quite vocal about their opinions which kind of defeated their role as a unifying head of state.