[Peace-discuss] Fw: [socialistdiscussion] Re: German elections

[unionyes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: walter_held 
To: socialistdiscussion at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 3:37 AM
Subject: [socialistdiscussion] Re: German elections


  Update on the developments in Germany.

Yesterday Sunday, voters went to the polls in four of the sixteen regional Laender. In three Laender, in the west the Saarland, and in the east Thuriginia and Saxony, the regional parliaments were voted upon. In the fourth, in Northrhine Westphalia (NRW) which includes the Ruhr industrial belt, municipal, district and mayoral elections were held. NRW has more electors than the other three combined.

The results are very interesting for the left.

In NRW, the SPD has been celebrating victories in many metropoles, regaining or holding Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Bielefeld, Bonn and Bochum. The ruling coalition of CDU and FDP in the regional capital Duesseldorf is on the point of losing its majority in the old heartland of social democracy, a majority of which the bourgeois camp was so proud. 
Yesterday the CDU dropped five per cent down to 38.6% vis-a-vis 2004. The free-market neoliberal FDP on the other other gained in strength from 6.8% up to 9.2%. 
In some areas the Greens did spectactularly well, winning 20 per cent in the million-strong city of Cologne. 
Five years ago the Left Party, then called the PDS, only managed a miserly 1.4%. This time the Linke won 4.4% and will be present in the councils of virtually all major towns and cities. 
The positive picture painted by the SPD is deceptive however; its share of the vote was actually even lower than its terrible result from five years ago and it only succeeded in gathering 29.4%, its lowest ever result. Only the fact that the CDU lost more of its share of the vote saved the SPD and brought them gains in some cities but they did not even manage to regain the old red citadels of Bottrop or Duisburg . The turnout was also the lowest in the postwar history of NRW.

Moving on to the Land elections.
- In the Saarland, Oskar Lafontaine's home region, the Linke did extremely well. Coming from almost nowhere, the Linke won 21.3%, only slightly behind the SPD with its 24.5%. 
The CDU government dropped a huge 13% from 47.5 down to 34.5%. If the SPD and Linke can succeed in forming a bloc with the Greens with their 5.9% they can oust the CDU regime. However neither the SPD nor the Greens are to be trusted. The SPD could have been running the government in Berlin for the past few years if they had accepted their numerical superiority over Merkel by linking up with the Linke and the Greens. Only the SPD's intransigence allowed the Grand Coalition under Merkel to happen.
And the Greens, now in the position of Kingmaker, are flirting with the CDU and being courted and flattered by the bourgeois camp. As we know there is already already a CDU/Green government in Hamburg. The Greens are not auotmatically left. Today's headline in the rightwing newspaper Die Welt reads: "The hour of the Greens, a bourgeois party"
http://www.welt.de/politik/article4429855/Die-Stunde-der-Gruenen-einer-buergerlichen-Partei.html#reqRSS
Watch this space over the next week or two to see which way the parties jump.

- In Saxony, the bourgeois camp has maintained its majority. The CDU dropped one per cent down to 40.2%, but the Linke actually lost 3 per cent dropping to 20.6%. The SPD picked up a half a percentage point achieving the magnificent total of 10.4%! The snarling neofascists are still in the parliament with 5.6% or 8 seats but they have lost much ground, dropping from a significant 9.2% down to 5.6%.

- And lastly in Thuringia, another gain for the left. The CDU has lost power, falling disastrously from 43% to only 31.2%. Both the Linke (up to 27.4% from 26.1%) and the SPD (up from 14.5% to 18.5%) gained ground. Again, it falls to the Greens to choose which camp to support.

Overall, the results are being trumpeted by the SPD leadership as the end of its nadir and the beginnings of an electoral recovery although their results are very patchy. Both the Greens and the SPD are putting forward the main slogan for the general election on a month's time as "Stop the Black/Yellow (CDU/FDP) coalition". This is not the same thing as "Stop the CDU". It can just as easily mean either a Black/Green coalition or indeed a continuation of the Grand Coalition between CDU and SPD. The Linke are hailing the results as the "establishment of the Linke as a truly nationally-based party". They have made some gains but have also lost ground. And although they have some strong points of support, such as in Dortmund, in most places they are only just scraping throughthe five percent mark. Their main push is for coalitions with the social democrats. Gysi appealed to the SPD to "resocialdemocratise itself". We have seen the Linke's willingness to participate in coalitions with the SPD before in Brandenburg where their anti-working class measures cost them half their electoral support. The hunger for office by the Linke leaders, sacrificing principled political positions may signal the end of their rise in popularity. 
We do not yet know if there will be red-red-green (SDP/Linke/Greens) regional governments anywhere following these elections but if they do get established, they could temporarily enhance the standing of the non-bourgeois camp in the run-up to the national elections on 27th September.

The cards are still being shuffled amongst the parties for the September elections, with Merkel courting the trade unions in private meetings, the CDU developing an anti-FDP social-leftish wing around Ruettgers and Seehofer. And the SPD mumbling incoherently about possible cooperation with the Linke at regional but not national level. And the Greens playing a double game, trying to ensure that whatever the outcome of the vote, it will play Kingmaker.
Walter



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