chance of ensuring this is that the Social Democratic Party are well represented, as they will be under a system where proportional representation plays a large part.
9.
In these circumstances I think that the decision which the Military Governors have taken, namely, to remove the preparation of the electoral law from the Parliamentary Council to the Ministers President, is right. The effect should be that in certain Laender at any rate electoral laws will be passed which are closer to our ideas and in which proportional representation, if not entirely eliminated, will at least be curtailed. In other Laender, the proportional representation system may prevail. I think it probable however that out of this there should emerge a system of laws which, while not being entirely uniform, will not be too dissimilar, and which will strike a fair balance between the two systems. Since there are already safeguards against splinter parties in the majority of the Laender in Western Germany, there is, I think, a good chance that these safeguards will be carried over into the new laws which the Ministers President and the Landtage are to draft.
Foreign Office, S.W.1.,
7th March, 1949.
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