Today, July, 21st, The German Bundespräsident Köhler announced his acceptance of Mr. Schröder's demission, thus initiating premature elections on September 18th this year. The purpose of this maneuver was to give Germany a chance to regain political stability, which is, concerning the German history of the 20th century, a sick joke. The post-war two-party system has been dysfunctional since the 80s, when the Free Democratic Party had been replaced by the Green / Bündnis 90 party. Later, after the fall of the iron curtain, the orthodox post-socialist PDS has established itself as the representative of Eastern Germany, where it turned out to be stronger than the Volksparteien (popular parties) SPD and CDU. In the eastern states, the orthodox socialist cannot be ignored. Now they have joined forces with disgruntled Social Democrats, remnants of the West German leftist scene, parts of the Greens and, wonder and miracle, even the National Democratic Party. The leftists have founded a new movement, called "Die Linkspartei" (The Leftist Party), and the polls show massive support, up to ten per cent of the voting potential is credited to the new movement, whose figureheads are old acquaintances: Oskar Lafontaine, who once deserted the first Schröder cabinet, and Lothar Bisky, a former member of the Politbüro of the Socialist Unification Party (SED) of the late but unlamented German Democratic Republic.
The opposition consists mostly of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union (In Bavaria). After Chancellor Kohl had been defeated by Gerhard Schröder in the 1998 elections, the Christian Union has been torn by corruption affairs, internal quarrels and diadoch wars and the fact that Mr. Kohl had eliminated all potentially dangerous (competent) persons from the top level of the CDU.
What is left over does by no means look as if they even want to win this election. Angela Merkel, who after a long period of internal quarrels, had emerged as the chairman of the CDU and who managed to win overlordship even over the strongest Christian MP in Germany, Mr. Edmund Stoiber from Bavaria, the only Christian MP ever to win by more than sixty per cent, started her campaign announcing that her administration would raise the VAT, which, with sixteen per cent is still at the lower end compared to European standards, but still a threat to our feeble economy, to first twenty per cent, then, after massive protests of her own crew, to still eighteen per cent. With 4.7 million officially admitted unemployed and about four million people on social welfare, this would stifle private demand even more than the high rate of unemployed and welfare beneficiaries do right now. The Schröder administration's labor market reforms have failed completely, raising the unemployed figures by twenty per cent, although he had promised in 1998 to cut them by half. Mrs. Merkel has no solution to offer but more taxes, more bureaucrazy, more restrictions. The German tax system is the world's most complicated, but the overdue simplification, promised as early as the Kohl administration, will never happen. Our socialists are not that timid, not only do they intend to raise the VAT to at least twenty per cent, they also announced the revival of the property tax and the introduction of a "Millionaire tax" just to prove that they are still the party of envy. Never mind that most of the higher-ranking socialists are millionaires themselves, they'll find a way to receive a tax exempt status, we can be sure. Even that the chief architect of the German labor market reform, Mr. Hartz, Chief of staff at Volkswagen, had to resign from office due to corruption charges, does not really spoil the image.
With this election, the political class in Germany has disqualified itself blatantly. Faith in the system is decreasing rapidly, as usual in favour of the more radically socialist groups, national or otherwise. What the polls show is that the new leftist movement will be strong enough to get more than ten per cent of the votes, Mr. Schröder's SPD might get as much as eighteen per cent, the Christian parties are likely to get twenty per cent. Greens and Free Democrats will remain below ten per cent. The likeliest outcome will be Leftists plus Social Democrats and Greens versus Christians plus Free Democrats, both groups with combined twenty-five to thirty per cent as almost equal forces. The decisive factor will not change at all: A majority of states (Bundesländer) in Germany is dominated by Christian administrations. This fact used to paralyze the SPD/Green administration and it will not help the next, whatever colors will dominate then as both Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel have excluded any form of "big coalition" (I refuse to call this "great") between SPD and CDU/CSU.
The least calculable factor is the right-wing voters, whom the National Democratic Party, the heirloom of the NSDAP, has recommended to join the new Leftist Party. The support of the nationalist forces is strong, especially in Eastern Germany, where the extremely right-wing parties like DVU (German People's Union) and NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) are represented in legislation in several states. There is no way to tell how far the support of these groups will carry the new leftist party.
It might be rather interesting, however, to see how the archrivals Gerhard Schröder and Oskar Lafontaine will get along in a coalition, or, maybe the French term "cohabitation" is more appropriate.
Anyway, times will become interesting, the Chinese way. Right now I pity all the children who will be kissed in that electoral campaign. They won't notice in time that the kissers don't want anything less than to steal their lollipops.
July 23, 2005
