Elections in Germany update:No turn to the right, after all!

Germany's 'Iron Lady' to challenge Schröder

By Tony Paterson in Berlin
24 May 2005


She has been compared to Margaret Thatcher and now Angela Merkel, Germany's conservative leader, is poised to follow the "Iron Lady" by becoming the first woman to run for Chancellor in elections this autumn.

Two conservative politicians, regarded as Mrs Merkel's main competitors, cleared the way for the 50-year-old east German after publicly endorsing her as the party's front-runner. The Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, took the high-risk decision to call a general election a year early after his ruling Social Democrats suffered devastating losses in the former stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia in a state election on Sunday.

Roland Koch, the Christian Democrat (CDU) prime minister of Hesse state, one of the conservatives who had been hotly tipped to run for the job, said: "The Chancellor candidate will be Angela Merkel of course. I don't know anyone in the party who thinks otherwise."

His views were echoed by Christian Wulff, the CDU prime minister of Lower Saxony. The twin endorsement meant that a conservative party meeting expected to declare Mrs Merkel's candidacy next Monday is likely to be little more than a formality.

Mrs Merkel declined to acknowledge that she was in line for the post yesterday. "Our job is to take notice of the fears and worries of voters and I am optimistic that we will be in a better position to solve Germany's problems," she said.

Opinion polls suggested that her party was poised to seize power from Mr Schröder's ailing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens in the election. A survey for German television gave the Christian Democrats 46 per cent, compared with 29 per cent for the SPD.

Mr Schröder's failure to tackle Germany's deepening unemployment problem, with five million out of work, despite unpopular reforms designed to kick-start the economy, was cited as the main reason.

The Chancellor's surprise decision to call an early election came as a political bombshell to the opposition conservatives and grassroots members of his own party. Mr Schröder proposed 1 July as the date for a vote of confidence yesterday. He will instruct his party to vote against him, paving the way for the President to dissolve parliament and call an election.

Several commentators speculated that Mr Schröder's gamble was aimed at presenting voters with a choice between himself and the untried and less charismatic figure of Mrs Merkel. Despite comparisons with Margaret Thatcher, Mrs Merkel has earned the less flattering nickname of "Iron Girl".

As an east German and a Protestant, many conservatives regard her as being out of step with the party's largely Catholic, middle-class west German mainstream. A protégé of Germany's "unification" chancellor, Helmut Kohl, Mrs Merkel was catapulted to the position of conservative leader five years ago, at the height of a slush-fund scandal engulfing the party.

Her appointment was designed to show that the conservatives had made a clean break with a corrupt past. Yet despite being party leader, Mrs Merkel was forced out of the running to be candidate for Chancellor in the 2002 election when the job was given to Edmund Stoiber, the charismatic right-wing Bavarian prime minister.

Despite Mr Schröder's troubles, some commentators doubted Mrs Merkel would be prepared for a snap election. "Mrs Merkel's programme has hardly been prepared," said Franz Walter, a political analyst at Göttingen University.

"Half of the people who are likely to vote for her don't want radical market reforms at all. They just want stability. The remainder do want substantial deregulation. The differences are so great that the party is certain to run into big problems."

Earthquake in Germany - will anything change?
(Filed: 24/05/2005)

The defeat of the Social Democrats (SPD) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous Land, marks a seismic shift in Germany's post-war history. The party had held the state for nearly 40 years. Not surprisingly, Gerhard Schröder, the chancellor, has decided to cut his losses and bring forward the general election by a year to this autumn. The alternative was to soldier ineffectually on, his already watered-down reform programme subject to further dilution.

Mr Schröder says he is seeking a new mandate to pursue Agenda 2010, a series of social security and labour market reforms launched in 2003. He is opposed in this endeavour by the Left wing of his own party and by a large section of the electorate which, despite years of stagnation and recession, does not want its well-padded welfare state to be dismantled. Given that the latest national opinion poll allots 29 per cent of the vote to the SPD, compared with 45 per cent for the Christian Democrats (CDU), the chancellor is taking a daunting gamble. Yet it would be a mistake to underestimate his ability to claw his way back. Tactical flexibility is the hallmark of this hardened, able politician, and he will seize whatever means are to hand.

In this campaign, he is likely to paint the Christian Democrats as Thatcherites set on destroying Germany's social model. Franz Müntefering, SPD chairman, has accused financial investors of pouncing on companies like "swarms of locusts", stripping them bare and moving on. And yesterday the party attacked the CDU/CSU opposition for advocating "market radicalism". The language is reminiscent of that in France, whose president, Jacques Chirac, said that "ultra-liberalism is as great a menace as communism in its day". Thus do continental parties on both wings of the political divide choose to describe what in Britain would be regarded as the normal workings of capitalism.

In fact, the charge against the German conservatives is absurd. They may push reform with greater vigour than the half-hearted attempt made by the SPD but that does not amount to radicalism. The Christian Democrats have already shown themselves reluctant to tackle the main impediment to economic revival - high labour costs and a rigid labour market. In Germany's moderate, consensual polity, its freedom of action limited by the European social and employment chapters, there is little to choose between the two main parties. And that lack of a radical alternative will condemn the country to at best a slow recovery from its current sclerosis.

If the measures are largely uniform, what about the personalities promoting them? Here, Mr Schröder, a likeable man with a colourful past, has the edge over Angela Merkel, the presumed conservative candidate. As a CDU leader who is a divorced Protestant woman from former East Germany, she stands out. And she has proved her toughness by seeing off the challenge to her leadership from Roland Koch, the state president of Hesse. Against all that, however, must be set her distinct lack of charisma.

Yet she deserves to be given a go at the chancellorship because of Mr Schröder's persistent breaking of election promises to revive the economy and bring down unemployment. After nearly seven years in power, he has hardly begun to wean Germans from their welfare dependency. He may personally believe in far-reaching reform but has still to convince his own party and the electorate of its necessity if the country is to retain its international competitiveness. By his own yardstick he has failed - and therefore should be voted out.

24.05.2005

A Madam Chancellor for Germany?

After years of working toward her goal, Angela Merkel is just a technicality away from running for Germany's highest office. Which begs the question: Is Germany ready for a woman chancellor?



A reporter recently asked Angela Merkel, "Are you tough?" The 50-year-old politician replied, "Let's just say I'm persistent."

And her persistence has paid off. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), just won a glaring victory in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was widely seen as a plebiscite on the current national Social Democrat government. Now, few doubts remain that she will be put forward as the candidate for chancellor, in snap elections to be held as soon as this fall.


As the question of her candidacy becomes more immediate, pundits have begun wondering if Merkel is Germany's answer to Margaret Thatcher. Known as the Iron Lady, Thatcher was England's first female head of state, and a decidedly conservative one at that.

Rocky times

Merkel is basically a careful person -- sometimes even skeptical or distrustful. That isn't likely to change. While she may be at the height of her powers right now, the past five months have proved that her caution was indeed called for. As recently as February, prior to the surprise victory of her party in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, she had her back pinned tightly against the wall.


At the time, many of those in the CDU leadership took a typical "bystander" attitude, waiting to see what would happen to "Madame Chairwoman." And Merkel herself felt left in the lurch, having wasted the entire second half of 2004 in internal fighting with the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU (Christian Socialists), over plans for a much disputed health-care reform package.

Her response? To prove her full dedication to the party. She upended her appointment calendar and increased her stumping appearances in the north. "I don't want to leave myself open to reproach," she explained, even as some were predicting Merkel would soon be singing a swan song.

Dedication paid off

In the end, the CDU leader was graced with the most important quality a politician can have, after competence and persistence: luck. The Social Democrat Prime Minister of Schleswig Holstein, Heide Simonis, was unseated by local CDU leader Peter Harry Carstensen in an upset decision. The public was stunned by new jobless figures of five million. The "visa affair" that rocked Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer added to the uncertainty of SPD voters. The CDU won in the north, against all prognoses, thus effectively ending the discussion over Merkel's ability to lead her party.

Merkel now looks set to be Germany's first-ever female candidate for chancellor. But then, she is no stranger to "firsts." Since 2000, she has been the first female CDU chairwoman, as well as the first woman at the head of the parliamentary party.

Not your typical CDU member

Merkel's biography -- she is a divorced Protestant, from eastern Germany, with no children -- isn't one typically associated with the CDU. Rather, the party is known for its conservative Catholic roots, and for being dominated by men from the western part of Germany.

Yet she was elected to the party chairmanship in 2000, amid a donation scandal. And in at the next party congress in 2004, in Düsseldorf, she tried to bring her history into harmony with that of the party, and succeeded.

From the beginning, the grass roots CDU members were more in favor than the party functionaries, of taking a chance on the PhD physicist from the east. Merkel had to defend herself against numerous opponents. It was often difficult and time-consuming, but one by one, she found her supporters and close aides. Her image suffered as a result. But after she ousted Friedrich Merz (photo) as parliamentary party chairman in 2002, she went on the offensive.

Unified vision needed

During the Iraq conflict, Merkel separated herself from the red-green leadership in favor of a pro-American course. Domestically, she wants to take a leading role in reforms. Thus far, she has waged a bitter battle with the CSU over health care reform. She survived it, but her plan came out severely weakened.

Ahead of the snap elections that everyone professes to support, there is one thing Merkel and other CDU-CSU leaders, will not say. At least not out loud. And that is, due to the rushed election, the CDU and CSU have a platform dilemma. The need to settle certain political issues and platforms prior to an election, so that they will not become problems during a CDU-CSU reign, has not been solved. Small signs of reform can be seen on questions of taxes and nursing care insurance.

But a definitive political platform is still lacking for the woman who may just become the first female chancellor of Germany.


Author DW staff (jen)

washingtonpost.com
Schroeder Trying to Fix Germany's Economy

By DAVID McHUGH
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 24, 2005; 12:53 AM



BERLIN -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tried to revive Germany's hidebound economy by chipping away at social protections _ angering his base and causing his support to plummet.

Now, facing early national elections after a regional vote where his Social Democrats suffered their worst beating in 51 years, he faces two choices in the coming campaign and neither is particularly promising.

The deft campaigner can push for more painful reforms and further alienate his base, or he can fall back on bashing big business _ a tactic that has so far failed miserably.

The choice between popularity and reform looms across Europe, where leaders are struggling to adapt the cherished but pricey welfare state to the pressures of a globalized market economy.

Polls show many voters in France will oppose the new European Union constitution in a referendum May 29 because they think it will lead to competition for jobs from countries with scanty social safety nets _ and undermine a comfortable standard of living and leisurely way of life enshrined for decades. Italy slipped into recession in the first quarter of the year as competition from low-wage countries undermined traditional mid-size businesses.

In Germany, growth reached a mediocre 1.7 percent last year after three years of near-zero growth, but unemployment _ boosted by a change in how jobless are counted _ pushed to over 5 million people and a rate of 12 percent.

Schroeder, after barely winning re-election in 2002, tried to shake up the economy with his Agenda 2010 reform program, which included cuts in unemployment benefits and in the social welfare benefits that burden businesses through payroll taxes of over 40 percent. This year, he proposed cutting the corporate tax rate.

Although the economy has picked up, growing in the first quarter at an annual rate of over 4 percent, leftists in his party are grumbling.

At his last campaign stop for local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schroeder shouted hoarsely over derisive whistles at his own party's rally, and the Social Democrats took their worst beating there since 1954. The party's following shrank by 5.7 percent from 2000.

Schroeder was forced to admit he'd lost his mandate and call elections, which will take place by Sept. 18, a year ahead of plan.

The move cuts his term by a year but spares him from hanging on as a lame duck. Instead, he can turn to campaigning _ at which he's a master _ and use the pressure of an election to discipline his unruly back benches.

He also left his opponents, the Christian Democrats, no time to find an alternative candidate to their leader Angela Merkel, who has had trouble uniting the party behind her.

Schroeder will be counting on SPD rank-and-file voters such as Holger Noss, 29, from Birkenfeld in western Germany, who applauded the idea of early elections. "If we wait until 2006, we will lose a lot of time that is very important for Germany," Noss said. "He started with Agenda 2010 and he must finish with it."

Schroeder's left-wing critics have some points, "but we also need the economy," he said.

During the campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schroeder and his party chief Franz Muentefering shelved their pro-business approach and attacked Germany's biggest companies as fat cats shipping jobs to lower-wage countries in Eastern Europe while they piled up profits at home. Muentefering even referred to financial investors as "locusts" who loot and pillage.

It didn't work, and some observers think Schroeder _ once dubbed "Der Genosse der Bosse," or "Comrade of the Bosses" _ will forget about business bashing.

Schroeder plans to clear the way for new elections by holding a confidence vote. That, together with the new elections, will act as a whip to bring disgruntled party members in line, Karl-Rudolf Korte, a political analyst at the University of Duisburg, said on ZDF television.

"The attraction lies in a confirmation of his reform course," Korte said. "A vote of confidence is the sharpest disciplinary measure that a chancellor has at his disposal. He will commit his party to this course, he will gather the factions and form his battle group."

"He will continue with his reform course," said Nils Diederich, a political expert at Berlin's Free University. "It will not be the capitalism critique, but instead the reform policies that will be in the foreground."

Diederich said Schroeder would try to paint Merkel and the conservatives as radical market reformers eager to dismantle the extensive worker protections, state-paid health and pension benefits and long vacations Germans have grown accustomed to.

"That will be the offer: Schroeder will say, 'We ask the citizens of the republic if they want to continue this reform policy or if they want radical, absolute market freedom in Germany,'" Diederich said.

"He will say, 'Our reforms are painful but they are in the interest of the little guy.'"

© 2005 The Associated Press