Germany -- "Happy, but with no illusions"

Alexandra Schulte and William West, our correspondents in Germany, assess the results of the country's recent general elections.

After sixteen years in power, Helmut Kohl, the self-styled elephant of German politics, has been ousted from office, and left to trundle off to that graveyard of defeated Chancellors. His Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered its worst electoral results since 1949, falling from 41% (1994) to an all-time low of 35%. The German electorate turned instead to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which increased its vote from 36% to 41%, and its relatively young leader, Gerhard Schr”der.

In the absence of any fundamental differences in political philosophy or policy, the battle was fought very much along personality lines, with the electorate choosing the dynamic Schr”der over the dour Kohl. One of the SPD's election slogans was "Time for a Change", and many voters - at least in the west - switched to the SPD because they were heartily sick of Kohl and the CDU. The Machiavellian Schr”der spent most of his energy trying to prove his and his party's electability, which meant keeping up with the CDU in its populist law-and-order pronouncements, stressing his pro-business and pro-European leanings, and not saying anything radical or controversial.

Echoing Blair's commitment to a (mythical) Third Way, the SPD promises to represent The New Middle for Germany. One such problem - perhaps the greatest - is unemployment, and Schr”der intends to set up a committee consisting of employers and trade unionists whose task it will be to create more jobs, as if the interests of both parties could (or should) be the same. The situation in the east is far more volatile and interesting than the west. The CDU's share of the votes fell by 10 points to 26% (in contrast to a drop of five points in the west).

Having previously invested their hopes in Kohl, the hero of German unification, the voters in the east finally realised that his promises to tackle unemployment and to invest heavily in the social infrastructure were hollow. Gains were made by the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), consolidating its position as the third force in east German politics. Under the leadership of the charismatic Gregor Gysi, the PDS represents a wide forum of socialist views, incorporating members of the old West German CP, left-wing socialists from the east who are just as opposed to the SPD as they were to the old GDR regime, a new generation of young east German socialists, and ex-members of the old SED which was in power until 1989.

The PDS remains very much an east German phenomenon (in the west, it polled only 2%), but, with its commitment to the "democratisation of democracy" and to political activity at local level, the party should soon be making significant gains in the west. The fear that one of the three far-right parties would gain a parliamentary proved unfounded, with a combined vote barely above the 3% mark. Nonetheless, the fact that a high percentage of men in the 18-24 group voted for the far right (in the east, 20%; the west, 10%), and that their vote in the east increased fourfold, demonstrates the threat that fascism still poses in Germany.

The PDS's success in the east just about enabled it to surmount for the first time the 5% hurdle needed to gain representation in parliament on a national level, and it is now, after the SPD (41%), CDU/CSU (35%), Greens (7%) and FDP (6%), the fifth power in German politics. This is a major breakthrough for socialists in Germany. Since the SPD has no working majority, the question now arises as to with which party it intends to form a coalition. A grand coalition with the CDU has now been ruled out, and the PDS is still seen by many social democrats as lying beyond the pale.

A coalition with the Greens now seems inevitable, with its leader, Joschka Fischer, becoming foreign minister. How long such a coalition can last, though, will depend largely upon the Green Party's willingness to accept the largely unecological basis of many SPD policies. The role of the PDS will be decisive, as it acts as the left-wing opposition to Schr”der's centrism, and seeks to hold the SPD to its more radical election promises, which include progressive tax reform to fund social spending and allowing dual nationality for the five million or so "foreigners" in Germany.

In short, the headline of the main national weekly newspaper in Germany, Die Zeit, after the election said it all: "Illusionslos glucklich" - Happy, But With No Illusions.

previous article ·  Nov '98 index of LLB ·  write to LLB ·  LLB home page ·  next article