Global News Journal

Merkel fights back with drop-dead argument

Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leader of the opposition Social Democrats squared off in one of the more riveting debates in parliament seen in ages on Wednesday, treating their respective camps to some fiery rhetoric that may galvanize support and help each side recover from steady erosions in opinion polls. After SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel threw down the gauntlet and spent 40 highly entertaining minutes ripping into Merkel and her centre-right government, the chancellor rose to the challenge — spending the next 40 minutes with a spirited defence of the performance since taking power 10 months ago and attacking the centre-left opposition for such things as putting Germany’s long-term energy security at risk with “ideologically driven energy policies.” Merkel, who may well face off against Gabriel in the next federal election due in 2013, whipped out a drop-dead argument that will probably make it difficult for anyone from either the SPD or from inside her own somewhat disenchanted conservative party to knock her out of office: unemployment has fallen by nearly two million to about three million since she took office in 2005.

Merkel’s popularity has nevertheless plunged since her re-election last year – due in part to incessant squabbling within the coalition and a perception her government has made little headway in moving the country forward. The centre-right government trails the centre-left opposition by about 10 points in opinion polls, an astonishing reversal of fortunes after they won the election last September by about 15 points.

“The most important thing is that the labour market is in robust shape,” Merkel, 56, said to cheers from her centre-right coalition of Christian Democrats and liberal Free Democrats sitting on the right half of the parliament floor who were clearly relishing their leader on the attack for a change. “Unemployment has fallen back to the level it was at before the financial crisis started two years ago. Five years ago it was nearly five million. This year we’ll possibly slip below the three million mark. That’s the mark of success for this Christian-Liberal coalition. We’re the growth engine of Europe.”

Gabriel, 52, had opened the debate in fine form, accusing Merkel of being a lapdog to lobbyists – her government gave hugely unpopular tax breaks to hotel owners and defied public opinion by agreeing to the demands of utilities to extend the use of nuclear energy. Gabriel also criticized what he called an increasingly unfair distribution of wealth in Germany under the centre-right government and the government’s habit of “giving tax breaks to the wrong people.”

He said the government has paid too much attention to saving private banks and not enough on education reform.

“The reason for your disastrous first year is that you don’t have a clue about which direction you’re taking the country in,” Gabriel said. “You’re primarily interested in catering to special interests. Never has a German government been so subservient to big business. You don’t have a clue about the damage your doing to Germany.”

Both political heavyweights scored points for good shots at each other but they also studiously ignored their own weaknesses. At the end of the day it was impossible to pick a winner – except perhaps the national TV audience and spectators in the Reichstag who got to see a really good battle for a change.

New SPD leader has tough job: saving his party

Two years ago Sigmar Gabriel came into the Reuters office in Berlin for an interview about climate change, the environment, renewable energy policies and the state of his Social Democrats.

The burly minister, who was elected leader of Germany’s struggling centre-left SPD party on Friday, had clearly lost weight on his summer holiday that had just ended so, while my colleagues were still streaming into the conference room, I asked: “You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you?”

Gabriel smiled briefly. Colleagues later told me they were horrified that I had asked him about his weight. It was merely an attempt to break the ice. There was, after all, another German political leader a few years ago who was once even heavier and lost more than 50 kg with an intensive jogging and diet programme that began one summer: Joschka Fischer of the Greens.

“Yeah, I did,” Gabriel said. “I got some exercise on my holiday. But I won’t be able to keep it off if people keep putting things like this in front of me like you’ve done here,” he added with a laugh as he munched on some cookies.

Gabriel soon regained the few kilos he had lost – so did so did Fischer.

Gabriel, who even then was clearly one of the most ambitious politicians of his generation, has a bigger worry right now.

How do you save Germany’s oldest party? The SPD won just 23 percent of the vote in the September election and left government after an 11-year run. That was down 11 points from four years ago and a staggering 18 points off the 41 percent they won when winning the chancellery in 1998. About 10 million voters who backed the SPD in 1998 have abandoned the party.

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.

German election live blog

Welcome to the live blog of the German election, a showdown between Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (left) and Chancellor Angela Merkel (right). More than 50 Reuters correspondents, photographers and television crews in Berlin and across Germany will be tracking the story throughout the weekend.

And in this box you will be able to follow the latest twists and turns throughout the weekend. We’re using #germanelection as the hashtag if you want to follow us on Twitter.

Here is a glimpse of the Reuters office in Berlin that will be delivering the story to Germany and the world.

Will former minister’s stab in the back hurt Germany’s SPD?

The last time Germany went to the polls, Wolfgang Clement was deputy head of the Social Democrats (SPD), and one of the most powerful figures in government: the “super minister” in charge of both economic and labour market policy, who had previously governed the SPD heartland of North-Rhine Westphalia, home to 18 million people.

 Four years on, Clement is urging the public to vote for one of the centre-left SPD’s most bitter rivals, the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

 In a newspaper advertisment on Friday, Clement said he was backing FDP leader Guido Westerwelle in Sunday’s federal election.

 An admirer of Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Westerwelle has branded the SPD socialists, and wants to end their 11 years in office to form a centre-right coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

Though Clement had long had a fractious relationship with the left of the SPD, the endorsement was unprecedented, said Josef Schmid, a political scientist at the University of Tuebingen.

 ”The man is no fool but to act like this is just idiotic,” he said of Clement, a former journalist who spent nearly 40 years in the party. “I can remember nothing like it.”

 The 69-year-old Clement left the SPD last November after a row blew up over his criticism of the party in the state of Hesse.

Little help from celebs for Germany’s undecided voters

Nobel prize-winning writer Guenter Grass is dressed in a mustard-brown cord suit and reading his work to a reverent audience in a hushed Berlin night club.

It feels more like a book launch than a political campaign event just days before the German election. Yet as far as celebrity endorsements for German political parties go, this is as big as it gets.

The Social Democrats (SPD) have boasted Grass, author of “The Tin Drum”, among their most famous  and vocal supporters for 40 years. Party leaders have come and gone, but 81-year-old Grass is reassuringly familiar — and strangely ageless as he reads in an expressive, animated voice.

The mood is convivial. Hardly what is required to provide the much-needed shot in the arm for the SPD, who lag Chancellor Angel Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the polls.

Political endorsements by Germany’s stars of stage and screen have always been earnest and low-key, in sharp contrast to the glamour Hollywood celebrities or chart-topping musicians hope to inject in U.S. elections.

But this time around, in an election campaign lacking dynamism and momentum from all sides, even the endorsements sound particularly flat, as the testaments on campaign websites for the two leading candidates show.

“When I see him and hear him speak, I see a man who is very clear,” explains Katharina Saalfrank, a television presenter famous for reforming naughty children in the show “Super Nanny”, on a website supporting Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the SPD Chancellor candidate.

from The Great Debate UK:

German elections too close to call

- Erik Kirschbaum is a Reuters correspondent in Berlin. -

Has this been dullest German election campaign in decades or the most exciting?  Has the battle for power in Berlin between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that concludes with Sunday's election been a memorable showdown or a forgettably boring contest?

Many journalists, pundits and voters have complained it's all been a merciless bore compared to the high-octane battles of the past with little action and precious few highlights.

But I would argue that in many ways it has been one of the most interesting campaigns in decades. Why? Because the outcome is so uncertain and there are more different government possibilities that could result from it than at any time in Germany's post-war history.

Instead of the usual centre-right or centre-left choice that German voters had for the last 60 years, there are options galore this time -- at least in theory.

There could be a centre-right government, another grand coalition or several three-way coalitions that could include the Free Democrats, the Greens and from a purely  mathematical point of view even the Left party that have never been tried before at the federal level.

On top of that, the opinion polls have once again tracked a dramatic narrowing in the lead that Merkel's preferred centre-right coalition (Conservative  Christian Democrats  and Free Democrats) have over the three other parties -- Social Democrats, Greens and Left party .

Flashmobs target Merkel at final election rallies

Getting pelted by eggs or tomatoes is an occupational hazard for most hardened politicians on the election trail.******But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seeking re-election on Sunday, has been confronted with a new kind of protest during her final campaign rallies: flashmobs.******The mobs, groups of people summoned over the Internet to show up at a specific time and place to do something unusual, have materialised at several election events in the last week to wave flags and banners and heckle the unsuspecting Merkel.******Mostly, they have been chanting “Yeahhhh!” after every sentence she utters and the slogan is meant as an ironic expression of support.******It may not sound like the most damaging critique, but Merkel has cottoned on to the flashmobs and now even addresses them at the rallies as “My young friends from the Internet”.******So is this a new form of political protest or just a bit of fun?******Blogger Rene Walter, who writes for nerdcore, says there is a serious idea behind the light-hearted gatherings.******”We are not just going to swallow the election messages, we are spitting back the rubbish Merkel speaks in the ironic form of a “Yeahhh!”, he says in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.******Many involved in the flashmobs support the Pirate Party, who are popular among young voters and oppose what they say is censorship of the Internet that has been brought in under Merkel’s government.******One thing is for sure. Flashmobs are injecting some much-needed spontaneity into the final days of a campaign which many voters think has been the most turgid in decades.******But are flashmobs here to stay? Could they become the political protest movement of the Internet age?

Fringe parties abound but have little chance in German election

Strangers to electoral office and with little experience in government, 23 parties outside the political mainstream are aiming to gain ground in Germany’s federal election this month, and their success or failure may give a taste of what’s to come in a country whose two main parties are losing appeal. Some analysts say that without reform, the number and importance of smaller parties will rise and make the country’s coalition system of government unmanageable – a harrowing reminder of the chaos of the Weimar years that made Hitler’s rise possible. At the moment the small parties are polling at around 5 percent, compared to the last election when they won 4 percent. But none alone is even close to clearing the 5 percent hurdle to access parliament.

Most of the micro-parties are based on single issues, some focusing on things like pensioners rights or animal protection. A smattering of religious parties are calling for stronger Christian values, and far-left groups urge different visions of proletarian revolution and state economic control. The computer-geek founded Pirate Party, which is also the fastest growing party in Germany, wants to legalise free downloads.

While the strongest of the obscure – the far-right German People’s Union (DVU) and the German National Party (NPD) already have a handful of representatives in state-level government, the others do not. None of them of course stand a chance against bigger rivals like the centre-right CDU/CSU, the free-marketeering FDP, the centre left SPD, or even the environmental Greens or far-left Left Party. But some are attracting younger voters, including those born after the fall of the Berlin Wall who increasingly reject the mainstream parties.

For a look at 23 German political parties (including the main ones), check out the Vote-O-Mat (aka “Wahl-O-Mat” in German). Answer a series of questions (in English) and a tool will produce a recommended voting list based on your responses.