GERMANY:Hamburg's most hated man, Judge Merciless, also known as Mr Ronald Schill, was thrown out of office yesterday, ending Germany's most bizarre political career as dramatically as it began.
Mr Schill, the hardline interior minister of Hamburg, was dumped from the three-way coalition that governs the city after apparently trying to blackmail his boss, Mayor Ole von Beust. After his dismissal, the two men appeared in front of television cameras and started slinging mud at each other, an extraordinary sight in the normally staid world of German politics. The row began when Mayor von Beust moved to fire a colleague of Mr Schill, a junior cabinet member suspected of breaching legislation that bans government members working for private industry.
Mr Schill went to the mayor's office to protest but was ordered to leave after he began making threats.
"In a face-to-face meeting he threatened . to make public that I made Dr [Roger] Kusch, the Justice Minister and my alleged partner, a senator, thus mixing private and public affairs," said Mr von Beust at yesterday's press conference. "His allegation is false and his threat is outrageous." The mayor said he fired Mr Schill on the spot, saying he didn't have "a suitable character" to be a minister. Hamburg prosecutors were examining Mr Schill's threats yesterday: coercion of public officials is a serious offence in Germany that carries a jail sentence of up to five years.
Mr Schill caused a political earthquake two years ago when his newly-founded "Law and Order" party, a populist right-wing grouping, came from nowhere to capture nearly one fifth of the vote in Hamburg state elections.
He was already known in the city as "Judge Merciless" for sentencing a mentally disturbed woman who scratched 10 cars to two years in prison without parole and for sending two people to jail for failing to stand when he entered the courtroom. Judge Merciless vowed to clean up Hamburg's seedy streets, voters listened and his party became the second-largest party in Hamburg, Germany's second city.
But the public soon tired of Mr Schill when he began to earn a reputation as more of a night-clubber than a law-maker. His party failed to make a breakthrough to a national level at the general election last year.
The party captured just 0.8 per cent of the vote, well short of the 5 per cent threshold required for a seat in parliament.