Global News Journal

Merkel in trouble, gambles with new ‘swing vote’ spokesman

Angela Merkel has come up with a risky – but intriguing – choice for one of the most-talked-about and closely scrutinised jobs in Germany:  her spokesman. The German chancellor is not normally known for rolling the dice with her decisions. Cautious to a fault, Merkel tends to seek consensus and the “safe road” with just about every decision she makes – whether that angers France when she first drags her feet on whether to push ahead aggressively with economic stimulus measures during the 2008 crisis or annoys Greece in early 2010 when it badly needed cash or at least strong words of support.

But Merkel has suddenly picked a complete outsider to try explain her government’s policies, an eye-raising choice of that may come back to haunt her.  German government spokesmen have an incredibly high public profile and appear in public almost daily explaining what Merkel and her ministers are trying to do. She will surely be hoping “Seibert’s smile will help get rid of Merkel’s woes” as Bild newspaper wrote

Merkel, whose popularity has plunged since winning the 2009 election, clearly savours surprising the self-proclaimed experts inside Berlin’s Autobahnring (beltway) with an unorthodox move now and then. And that seems to be an overriding motive in picking TV news anchor Steffen Seibert as her new spokesman. He will replace Ulrich Wilhelm, her able and eloquent spokesman of the last five years who is headed for a top TV executive job in Bavaria.

“It definitely pleased the chancellor that no one was expecting Steffen Seibert to be picked,” wrote Bild newspaper columnist Hugo Mueller-Vogg. “The rumour mill in Berlin had just about every name on the list of candidates except his.” Seibert is known to millions of TV viewers in Germany, a clean-cut man who reads the news each night with a sober voice and pretty face. (“I’ve got a pretty mother and I inherited her genes,” Seibert said once when asked about his good looks). And he has worked for his ZDF public broadcasting network abroad.

But Seibert has been based in the small and sleepy western town of Mainz and never worked in Berlin, which can be a treacherous place for novices even in the best of times. And with Merkel’s government tumbling from one new low to the next, this is hardly the best of times for a beginner.

“He’s never experienced the political world in Berlin,” said Bela Anda, a former newspaper reporter who was Chancellor Gerhard Gerhard’s spokesman from 1998 to 2005. “He’s going to find out soon enough that Berlin is not Mainz.”

Angela Merkel’s “read my lips” moment

    Angela Merkel has already abandoned plans to pursue billions of euros in tax cuts next year — the central policy pledge of her 2009 election campaign and main plank of her 7-month-old coalition agreement with the Free Democrats.

    But now her uneasy government looks ready to go one step further and raise value-added tax on certain products which benefit from a reduced rate to help it consolidate the budget.

    This is what Merkel had to say about such a move in an interview with N24 television in June 2009, in the midst of the election campaign: “There is absolutely no need to worry about that, it won’t happen. In the midst of an economic crisis it is absurd to even discuss these questions.”

    She told top-selling daily Bild that same week: “With me, there will be no increase in the next legislative period, neither of the full, nor of the reduced rate of value-added tax.”

    If her government does decide to raise VAT rates — it will meet this weekend to try to forge a consensus on fiscal plans — Merkel can and will claim that underlying economic conditions have changed since she uttered those seemingly definitive words nearly a year ago.

    The Greek crisis has spooked leaders across the euro zone, and many are scrambling to consolidate their budgets to avoid suffering the same fate as Athens, which was forced to go cap in hand to the EU and IMF.

    But Merkel’s about-face is different and more serious, especially for a leader who came into office in 2005 vowing to put an end to the “false promises” of previous German governments.

Germany: a tale of two foreign ministers

“Self-confident”, “smart” and “rhetorically brilliant” – just some of the adjectives the media have lavished upon Germany’s favourite politician as he has covered thousands of miles traversing the globe on his country’s behalf since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new centre-right administration took office late last month.

But Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is not in charge of foreign affairs — a position usually associated with voter popularity. He is defence minister.

Already nicknamed ”the other foreign minister“, the 37-year-old Guttenberg, a conservative former economy minister who cut his teeth on foreign policy, has won praise for his fluency in English, his directness and his ability to outshine more powerful counterparts on the international stage.

Watching the aristocratic AC/DC fan from the sidelines has been the new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, whom newspapers have mocked for adopting a cautious, defensive approach that critics say is more redolent of, well, a German defence minister.

In fact, Westerwelle, 47, has already travelled thousands of miles further than his predecessor Frank-Walter Steinmeier over the same period. By the time the first month in office has passed he will have journeyed to some 15 states, including Israel, Afghanistan and the United States. Steinmeier managed only 10 and did not get beyond Europe in that time, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Germany might be the winner if its diplomatic duel helps it towards a more assertive foreign policy — something it has struggled to achieve in the long shadow of the Nazis.

But it could also find itself giving mixed messages to the outside world, to say nothing of potential tensions within the new coalition. Guttenberg belongs to the Bavarian CSU and Westerwelle heads the pro-business FDP — parties that have clashed on a range of policies in the past.

Could the “Baron from Bavaria’s” success rock the coalition in Berlin?

It was a weekend of mixed fortunes for the German government’s aristocratic AC/DC fan Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

    In Sunday’s federal election, the 37-year-old conservative Economy Minister won 68.1 percent of the direct votes in his constituency — more than any other politician in Germany, and nearly 20 points more than Chancellor Angela Merkel — and earning him the nickname “King of the votes” in German media.

    However, his Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats, had their worst day at the polls in 60 years, taking just 42.6 percent of the vote in the state they have ruled almost single-handedly since the war.

    With turnout at a record low, Merkel’s conservatives secured a mandate to form Germany’s first centre-right coalition since 1998 with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

    But the success enjoyed by Freiherr Guttenberg — mockingly dubbed the “Baron from Bavaria” by former Social Democrat chancellor Gerhard Schroeder — could pose problems for the CSU’s populist leader, Horst Seehofer.

    Keen to quash any talk of a leadership tussle with the telegenic hard rock fan and sometime DJ, the 60-year-old Seehofer told a board of directors in Munich: “You can’t start coalition talks with questions about staff.”

    Despite its campaign slogan: “What our country needs now: a stronger CSU in Berlin”, the CSU heads into coalition talks weakened. Buoyed by its best ever performance, the FDP will likely have twice as many seats as the CSU in parliament and hopes to take control of three or four portfolios.

Germany’s Greens celebrate victory in defeat

Sunday’s federal election threw Germany’s Greens into a state of disarray — should they celebrate their best result ever or mourn the fact they failed to prevent a centre-right coalition and languished in fifth place?

“A Victory that is a Defeat”, “Triumph and Bitterness”, “Celebrations despite missing goal,” read newspaper headlines on Monday.

The Greens, one of the world’s most successful environmental parties, won more than a tenth of the vote — not bad for a party whose members entered parliament as revolutionary rebels in the 1980s flourishing potted plants and sporting woolly jumpers.

“We feel strengthened in our fight for ecological modernisation, social justice and civil rights by the best result we have ever had,” co-leader Juergen Trittin told hundreds of party faithful on Sunday evening at the Greens headquarters in Berlin.

But a German colleague who attended the event, Hans-Edzard Busemann, told me the ambiance was confused rather than euphoric, and faces fell when they saw the results for the first time.

No wonder. The Greens were hoping to be the third strongest party at the elections and kingmakers in governemnt coalition talks — a goal they missed by a long stretch, trailing behind their nemesis the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on 14.6 percent and the far-left Linke on 11.9 percent.

from Commentaries:

Germans vote for change; will they get it?

Germans have voted for change. A centre-right government with a clear parliamentary majority will replace the ungainly grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats that ran Europe's biggest economy for the last four years.

This should mean an end to "steady as she goes" lowest common denominator policies, and at least some reform of the country's tax and welfare system. The liberal Free Democrats, who recorded their best ever result with around 14.7 percent, will try to pull the new government towards tax cuts, health care reform, a reduction in welfare spending and a loosening of job protection in small business.

Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, a cautious centrist, made clear in her first post-election comments that she she would not allow a radical lurch to the right. She promised to be the "chancellor of all Germans" -- old and young, entrepreneurs and workers -- and said the conseravtives would be sufficiently dominant in the new coalition to prevail "in questions that affect social balance".

The new government faces tough economic challenges in what is bound to be a more polarised political atmosphere, with the Social Democrats in opposition. The economy is expected to contract by at least 5 percent this year, and export-led growth is likely to return only slowly. Unemployment is set to explode in the coming months as short-time work schemes run out. The budget deficit is set to top 6 percent of gross domestic product next year, more than twice the EU limit. So 2010 will be an extremely difficult year. But there are some problems that are even more urgent.

The first big choice involves Germany's ailing banks. Outgoing Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck admitted last week that the public-owned regional Landesbanks "continue to pose an enormous systemic risk to our market". The outgoing parliament passed a virtually useless "bad bank" law meant to encourage stricken financial institutions to put their toxic assets into state-guaranteed special purpose vehicles. The banks have so far spurned the system because it leaves the risk of losses with them rather than with the taxpayer.

Merkel and her new partners need to amend the law so that the state takes more of the risk, otherwise Germany faces a future of "zombie" banks that are too burdened with liabilities to lend to the real economy. That won't be popular, with the left bound to claim that taxpayers are being forced to bail out wealthy bankers.

Fixing the banks is more urgent than cutting taxes or curbing public spending to revive the economy. That also means merging the Landesbanks, shrinking their activities and privatising as much as possible. The Germans must also be ready to allow healthy foreign banks to buy up sickly German ones. That is the logic of the European single market, to which a centre-right government is likely to be more committed.