[Peace-discuss] Fw: Germany: Can The SDP Lion Add Bite to its Roar?

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Subject: Germany: Can The SDP Lion Add Bite to its Roar?


> Can The SDP Lion Add Bite to its Roar'
> 
> By Victor Grossman
> 
> Berlin
> 
> It recalled ancient Greek tragedies. The Social
> Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), founded in the 19th
> Century, is the country's oldest party, and now its
> saddest one. On September 27th  it suffered its worst
> election defeat since 1897, losing six million former
> voters and ending up with only 23 percent of the vote.
> It had been in government office for eleven years, as
> boss with the Greens under Gerhard Schroeder and as
> junior partner under Angela Merkel since 2005. Now it
> must share the less glorious opposition seats in the
> Bundestag with the Greens, as rivals, and the
> frequently despised and feared Left party. What a
> disastrous comedown for a once proud party!
> 
> What caused this loss and how does the SPD plan to stem
> the hemorrhage of members and voters' The first
> question is easy to answer. It betrayed its traditional
> base, the working people and the underprivileged.
> Cutting deep gashes in a once exemplary health system,
> pushing the retirement age up to 67, passing Draconian
> measures against the millions who lose their jobs,
> raising consumer taxes while cutting taxes on the
> wealthy and spending billions on weapon systems and
> armed expeditions to the Mediterranean, the Horn of
> Africa and Afghanistan, it either initiated such
> measures as government leader or continued them as
> Merkel's junior partner. Any timid doubts by its
> rickety left wing were dispatched with Schroeder's
> fabled 'Basta' ' 'Enough of that' - and threats to
> withdraw needed support in the next elections. The
> habit of many SPD cabinet ministers, including
> Schroeder, to get top positions in big companies when
> they left office, added additional color to the
> picture. Even a political imbecile could predict the
> backlash, if not its magnitude. In September it was the
> voters' turn to say 'Basta'!
> 
> How could the catastrophe be overcome' A recent
> congress in Dresden aimed at a new road plan.  There
> were dozens of critical speeches about past sins and
> calls for a complete overhaul and return to the
> militancy of some nearly forgotten past. Indeed, it was
> a tradition to make strong demands when out of office.
> Again, it was proclaimed that it was not such a bad
> party after all and had a new program to win German
> hearts and minds as a party of the left! Or was it,
> after all, the center-left'
> 
> Among philosophers, 'Buridan's ass' refers to an
> undecided donkey standing halfway between two equal
> bales of hay and starving to death. If the SPD verged
> leftward it approached the positions of The Left, the
> very party it had ridiculed, denounced and, whenever
> possible, ostracized. But keeping in the right lane
> (known as moderate) meant losing even more members and
> voters to the young party, which had already overtaken
> it in four out of five East German states, now in
> Berlin as well, if only by a few noses, and was
> beginning to challenge it in the western states as
> well. But if it were to become a genuine opposition
> party, more or less leftish, it must further adopt ' or
> plagiarize ' the positions of The Left, without seeming
> to approach it too closely or losing its identity as a
> supporter of the 'social market economy'. It feared
> being exposed to nasty red-baiting from the governing
> Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats
> (FDP) as an ally of The Left. Then, too, it could not
> ignore the hundreds of thousands of Euros from golden
> sponsors like Daimler, BMW, Porsche or the Deutsche
> Bank.
> 
> The congress in Dresden seemed to indicate that its new
> leaders, many of them carryovers from the past, will
> continue to act like a toothless old lion, making loud
> roaring noises, but not all too loud.  For example,
> when worried grass roots voices demanded that the SPD
> reverse its policy of postponing retirement pensions
> from 65 to 67, a key issue in unemployment-plagued
> Germany, the party's new Secretary General, Andrea
> Nahles, who still has the progressive-looking smile she
> once adopted when she was really on the left in the
> party, but little else than the smile, warned that 'a
> quick change toward switching from 67 back to 65 would
> be completely unconvincing' and added vaguely, 'We must
> develop a policy which hinders poverty in old age.' To
> switch feline metaphors, it did not seem likely that
> this leopard could change its spots.
> 
> Meanwhile the new government of Angela Merkel and Guido
> Westerwelle, the clever FDP boss, vice-chancellor and
> foreign minister, was busy hatching out plans for its
> attacks on welfare. There was some debate on the issue
> of taxes ' how soon and how much the wealthy should get
> away with, how best and how soon health care could be
> cut, whether the retirement age could be raised even
> further ' and other such goodies. On most issues it
> appeared that the FDP is even further to the right than
> the Christian Democrats. It also appears that the worst
> is yet to come ' after the crucial May elections in
> North-Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the biggest
> population and worst rust belt in western Germany.
> Merkel's party needs to keep control there, the SPD
> must not lose even more bitterly in what was once its
> main fortress and The Left must try to establish itself
> in the industrial heart of Germany.
> 
> After the elections the government will most likely
> wield its axe in earnest. To oppose it, and despite all
> former animosities, some kind of unity between the
> three opposition parties, the SPD, the Greens and The
> Left, would seem  more urgent than ever.  Only in
> Berlin and now in Brandenburg, surrounding Berlin, have
> the SPD leaders been willing to form a coalition with
> The Left. This question will continue to occupy the
> minds of politicians in both parties, and there are not
> a few on the Left, who fear that in such coalitions,
> with the SPD as senior partner, it would be the SPD
> which, like Dracula, could gain new strength by tapping
> the blood of an all too compromise-happy left.
> 
> Oskar Lafontaine played a key part in bringing together
> the older left in Eastern Germany and militant leftwing
> forces in Western Germany to form The Left and help it
> win an unprecedented 11.9 percent vote in September,
> largely because of new additions from West Germany,
> most dramatically in Saarland, his home state. He
> warned urgently, not against any possible coalition
> compromises, but against dangerous, unprincipled
> compromises, and was an unruffled, knowledgeable voice
> in the Bundestag and in rare talk show opportunities.
> There was amazement when he quit his leadership job in
> the caucus of The Left in the Bundestag. Now we know:
> he was hit by cancer and will be operated upon today.
> His future depends on the medical results.
> 
> Above and beyond personality issues, however, so
> important they can be, will the economic situation and
> government attacks on the welfare of most Germans be
> enough to achieve some kind of unity in opposition, not
> only with political parties but with student, ecology,
> gay, anti-globalization and above all the labor
> movements' The question is crucial for everyone, but
> above all for the battered SPD. Some say that its 23
> percent vote marked rock bottom, and now look to an
> upturn. Others fear an even deeper abyss.
> 
> November 19, 2009
> 
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