By Zhang Bihong

    BERLIN, July 1 (Xinhuanet) -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder achieved a no-confidence result on Friday in parliament as he wished, embarking on a smooth way to early national elections, but it is not an easy way for him to be reelected as polls show his party lags far behind the major opposition.

    The no-confidence result was easily secured as 296 members of the Bundestag lower chamber voted against, 148 abstained in the vote of confidence. Only 151 members voted for the motion.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, right, and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, left, listens to the debate July 1.

    The vote is an important step towards early election but it does not mean the matter is decided.

    The chancellor would base the vote result to ask Federal President Horst Koehler to dissolve the parliament and announce an earlier election.

    The president has 21 days to make his decision and the Constitutional Court is expected to be asked to rule on Schroeder's move to lobby for his own no-confidence vote.

    Koehler could reject early elections on legal grounds, but political experts do not expect this as they thought Schroeder did a good job in justifying the need for early elections.

    Speaking to the parliament on Friday before the vote, Schroeder cited a lack of legitimation for his reform policies and conflict within his Social Democratic Party (SPD) as the reasons for seeking new elections.

    He said, "If we are to continue with this agenda, legitimation through new elections is needed." Left-wingers in the SPD are opposed to his economic reforms.

Chancellor Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder listens to the debate at the Bundestag lower house of parliament before a no-confidence vote against him July 1. (AFP)

    He asked the SPD and coalition Green party members, who enjoy majority in the Bundestag, to abstain from voting so as to pave the way for an early general election.

    "It was convincing," Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz, a former member of Germany's highest court who ruled in favor of former chancellor Helmut Kohl's early elections in 1983, told N-TV.

    Mahrenholz said that the point was Schroeder's detailed warning of how his slim majority was no longer enough to keep a stable government.

    Uwe Anderson, a political science professor at the University of Bochum, agreed with Mahrenholz, saying that it was unlikely that Koehler would block early elections.

    Anderson also predicted that the Constitutional Court would rule in favor of early polls, "because back in 1982 Kohl still hada solid majority behind him," stressing that Schroeder's current situation is far more acute than that of Kohl in 1982.

    Schroeder called surprisingly for the general election to be advanced a year earlier to this autumn in May, when the SPD party was defeated in a state election in its stronghold North Rhine-Westphalia.

    If the president approves, new elections will be held within 60days.

    However, some thought that the chancellor was gambling as pollsters believe early elections could well put an end to his seven-year chancellorship.

    Schroeder, who has been fighting a weak economy and high jobless rate of 11 percent, faces a gloomy election prospect as polls show his SPD party was marginally overtaken by Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel, who aims to become Germany's first female chancellor.

    A Stern magazine/RTL TV poll on Wednesday showed Merkel's CDU/CSU alliance and its Free Democratic Party (FDP) ally got 53 percent of support, while Schroeder's SPD-Greens government 33 percent.

    Major parties prefer an early election.

    Merkel hailed Schroeder's call for parliament to be dissolved after the confidence vote, saying the country needed a new government.

    "We welcome your call," Merkel said in her reply to Schroeder's speech on Friday. "The next election will be an election about the direction the country is taking," she said.

    Newly founded leftist alliance by the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the Election Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WAG) netted 11 percent of support in current polls.

    Analysts say one possibility is that the PDS/WAG bloc may win so many votes that it blocks all possible coalitions other than a hand-joining of the SPD and CDU alliance.

    But both Schroeder and Merkel vowed not to enter such a government. Enditem