Miklas did not intervene, when on 4 March 1933 after a heated discussion in the Nationalrat parliament over a strike of federal railways employees Speaker Karl Renner as well as his deputies Rudolf Ramek and Sepp Straffner resigned their offices. The assembly was no longer capable for actions and decisions, which gave Miklas' party fellow Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss the pretext to declare the parliament's "self-elimination". The government obstructed any resumption of the session by massive presence of police forces as well as of paramilitary Heimwehr troops led by Emil Fey — a self-coup which enabled Dollfuss to rule by "emergency decrees" following the Article 48 example set by German President Paul von Hindenburg.