German Elections--Herr Gore Part 2

[MavKikiNYC]

Have I missed the commentary on what's going on in Germany?

Battle for Power Begins in Germany After Inconclusive Vote

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
and KATRIN BENNHOLD
Published: September 19, 2005

BERLIN, Sept. 19 - Gerhard Schröder and his conservative contender, Angela Merkel, embarked on an intense battle for power today after German voters failed to give any party a clear mandate to form a new government.

In a result that leaves Europe's biggest economy in a political limbo, Mrs. Merkel's Christian Democrats beat Mr. Schröder's Social Democrats with a margin too narrow for her to secure a governing majority - and too narrow for Mr. Schröder to concede defeat.

As both candidates laid claim to a mandate to govern as chancellor, senior party officials in both camps met today to discuss their strategies, before beginning coalition talks with each other and with smaller parties.

In a result that stunned politicians and pundits, many of whom had anticipated a historic vote for change, voters produced what is already being billed as the most inconclusive election results in Germany's postwar history.

The results gave Mrs. Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union the highest vote total, at 35.2 percent.

But even an unexpectedly strong showing by her party's main coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, failed to give an absolute majority in Parliament to Mrs. Merkel.

According to German law, it is Parliament that will choose the next chancellor.

The Social Democratic Party received 34.3 percent of the vote, which means that it has lost the slender majority in Parliament it had with its partner, the Green party, for the last seven years. The Greens scored 8.1 percent, less even than the recently formed extreme Left Party, which garnered 8.7 percent.

The election has widely been seen as a crucial one in Germany, the powerhouse of Europe's economy, because it confronted the German public with some fundamental choices at a time of deep economic difficulty, no growth, high deficit and record unemployment.

Mrs. Merkel, who has often been likened to Margaret Thatcher of Britain, campaigned for free-market reforms and reductions in social welfare.

Mr. Schröder's platform was based on the notion that his government already had put into place the more modest reforms that are needed in Germany.

Fears that political stalemate would put off further tax and market reforms reverberated well beyond Germany's borders. It drove the euro to a 7-week low against the dollar, and prompted the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to urge the German political classes to find "a solution that is stable for Europe."

But with German parties keeping their cards close to their chest on today, the makeup of the next coalition government remained uncertain.

Germany's top-selling daily newspaper, Bild, led its Monday edition with the headline: "War of the Chancellors," while the business daily Handelsblatt referred to "Coalition Chaos in Berlin." The left-of-center Süddeutsche Zeitung predicted that the next few weeks would belong to "the Machiavellians and the grand strategists."

Many political observers still believe that Mrs. Merkel will seek to forge an alliance with her rivals, the Social Democrats, in what has come to be called a "grand coalition," even though Mrs. Merkel spoke out strongly against the idea during her campaign. "Red-Green has lost the election," Mrs. Merkel said late Sunday, using a common description for the Social Democratic-Greens coalition that has governed Germany since 1998.

"That's the good news," Mrs. Merkel said. "Now we have to form a government."

Volker Kauder, general secretary of the Christian Democrats, said his party would "first talk to the F.D.P. and then to all the other parties, except the Left Party."

Mr. Schröder fired back: "I don't understand, and I am certain the people in Germany also don't understand, how the conservatives can claim a mandate to lead."

Mr. Schröder argued that his stronger-than-expected showing indicated that the German public wanted him to stay in power as chancellor, and he ruled out cooperating with the conservatives in any "grand coalition" unless he remained chancellor. And yet he babbles that the German public wants him to stay?

The chancellor named by Parliament is usually the leader of the party that garnered the most votes, but German election results have rarely given any single party an absolute majority. This has led to what has until now been a stable coalition arrangement - the Social Democrats with the Greens and the Christian Democrats with the Free- Democrats.

But Mrs. Merkel's apparent failure to win an absolute majority with the Free Democrats has introduced a high degree of uncertainty into Germany's political system.

[Mavdog]

Merkel is a very interesting politician. Born in West Germany but taken by her parents to East Germany where her father was a Lutheran pastor, she experienced a lot od=f discrimination against her by the communists due to her father's occupation.

She was a Schroeder supporter early on but later fled to find herself as a leader of the opposition.

She was asked to stand aside for the last election, which put her in charge when the candidate she stepped aside for lost. good bet on her part.

now she is saying the German model is broken and she has the medicine to cure what ails it. from the election results, it seems that the german public may not be on the bus yet.

one of her main planks was to institute a flat tax. that caused a ton of doubt from the left of center voters who felt it would hurt the poor.

[MavKikiNYC]

So where does that leave the Schroederwagon?

[Mavdog]

in the proverbial rut on the side of the road.