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.

Frank is “very laid-back”, says a member of the Berlin band, TheBossHoss, who according to the campaign website stormed the charts in 2005.

Not to be left out, the Christian Democrats (CDU) have their own endorsement site for Merkel, which
features businesspeople, actors and curiously, several German boxers and kickboxers expressing their support.

German world boxing champion Regina Halmlich says she likes Merkel because she “keeps a cool head”.

Former German national footballer Olaf Thon says he wants her to remain in her job because “as a woman she is the strongest man in the country.”

Some 20 percent of the German electorate are still undecided on which way to cast their vote. Germany’s “promis”, or celebrities, seem unlikely to provide any help.

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?

Strikingly different election campaign styles in Germany and Britain, especially parties’ contrasting use of the media, provide some intriguing insights into the political traditions of the two nations.

in Britain, the parties hold daily news conferences, broadcast live, where leaders attempt to set an agenda for the day — be it on health, tax or education — and then get grilled by the press corps.

In Germany there is no equivalent. In fact, there are not even regular weekly news conferences with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democrat (SPD) rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Instead, they seek direct contact with voters by holding speeches in town squares and, especially in the southern state of Bavaria, beer tents.

The challengers are not interested in playing to the media because the election does not dominate the German headlines as much as it does in Britain.

One reason for the particularly strong contrast this year is the duo fighting the German election. Merkel and Steinmeier are shying away from personal attacks as they know they may have to share power again after the Sept. 27 vote.

And few dispute that either challenger competes with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair or opposition leader David Cameron – let alone U.S. President Barack Obama — on charisma.

Indeed, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s media instincts — on display in the 2002 campaign when he waded through flooded areas in wellington boots — stood out because they were an exception.

But the differerences run deeper than individuals.

The national media plays a far bigger role for British politicians. Clinching the backing of The Sun tabloid was a pivotal moment for Blair before his 1997 landslide.

In this environment, pictures and soundbites become all-important for politicians to get their message across.

An enduring image of 2005’s UK election was when Blair bought his arch-rival Gordon Brown an ice cream in a show of unity designed to shake off rumours the two were not speaking.

In Germany, the regionally fragmented newspaper landscape means no single headline carries as much weight.

In addition, the overall relationship between politicians and media is very different.

Germany’s top politicians are never subjected to the aggressive, at times irreverent, probing British politicans get from BBC interviewers John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman. 

Although German reporters do not stand up when Merkel enters the room, as their U.S. counterparts do for the President, there is a high degree of respect discernible among Berlin’s political hacks who tend to ask thoughtful, serious questions rather than try to catch out their subjects.

So what does this reflect?

Germany’s relatively short tradition of parliamentary democracy, compared to that of Britain, France and the United States, has — some commentators argue — nurtured a greater deference to authority than in Britain.

Germany adopted a political system after World War Two carefully designed to avoid the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic — a fragmented system that had enabled Hitler’s rise to power.

Today’s system makes for stable but moderate coalition governments which cannot implement radical reforms in the tradition of, say Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, say analysts.

A series of checks and balances and the distribution of power to the 16 federal states limit politicians in what they can do.

Some commentators argue an unforgiving British media does the job the country’s political system fails to do.

For example, it is almost unthinkable that a German reporter would pose the question: “Do you have blood on your hands?” as a British reporter asked Blair after the death of David Kelly, a government weapons expert who was found dead after being linked to a BBC report stating the government had exaggerated the case for going to war in Iraq.

The political setup suits Germans who these days prefer incremental change and predictable politicians to charismatic leaders with radical ideas, say political scientists, who argue the many merits of the German structure.

But are the benefits of the German system a recipe for a turgid election campaign?

The German election campaign has so far lacked the riveting debates and explosive issues to which voters were treated in previous battles for power, perhaps because Chancellor Angela Merkel and her rival, Vice-Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have worked together in the same “grand coalition” government for the past four years and neither party seems especially eager to rock the boat.

Filling the void have been several somewhat bizarre little scandals that each side has tried to use to tarnish the other, taking pot shots without resorting to full firepower. They are, after all, partners in power.

First there was Ulla Schmidt, the Social Democratic health minister whose questionable use of her official car on holiday in Spain came to light only after the car was stolen. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and opposition parties have done all they can to turn the “Dienstwagenaffaere” into a campaign issue — an example of a minister out of touch with voters for taking full advantage of government privileges — even though Schmidt insists she has done nothing wrong.

Now Merkel, the CDU chancellor, is facing criticism from the SPD and opposition parties for throwing a controversial dinner party at the chancellery (at the taxpayers’ expense) last year for Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann to mark his 60th birthday. “She told me at the time she would like to do something for me,” Ackermann told German TV in a profile of Merkel last week. “She said I should invite 30 or friends I’d like to spend an evening with to the chancellery.”

Merkel defended the meeting, saying she is always trying to bring different groups of people together at dinners.

And also in the spotlight is Economy Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, the rising young star of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, for using external advisers to draft complex financial legislation.

A parliamentary budget committee has started an investigation into whether any government rules were violated. Germany’s best-selling daily Bild has already reached its verdict: “It’s all nonsense,” wrote Einar Koch in a column on Wednesday. “The petty dispute about the dinner in the chancellery shows how devoid of content the 2009 election really is. If the chancellor of Europe’s leading economic power cannot invite 25 important industry and cultural leaders to a dinner in the chancellery, then it’s ‘good night’ for Germany”. His paper’s editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann and its publisher Mathias Doepfner were among those at the Ackermann party.
So is it misuse of taxpayer money for the chancellor to throw a birthday party at her office for one of the most powerful bankers in the country? Or is it simply a smart thing to do, getting industry, political and cultural leaders together for some high-powered elbow rubbing?

Watch this space on Sunday for live blog coverage of three state German elections, just four weeks before the federal election on Sept. 27.

PHOTO - Chancellor Angela Merkel and CEO of the Deutsche Bank AG Josef Ackermann meet in Berlin. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

Between running an election campaign and trying to save European carmaker Opel at the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was baking a currant cake and writing out a shopping list for her husband.

Merkel has sought in recent months to soften her business-like image by opening up about her life at home, hoping to reach out to more voters ahead of the federal election on September 27.

(Photo: Merkel attends the inauguration of the Oslo Opera House, April 13, 2008, Reuters/Bjorn Sigurdson)

As Germany’s first woman chancellor, Merkel used an interview with feminist magazine Emma this week to illustrate her down-to-earth approach to juggling work and family.

According to the Allensbach Institute, a leading pollster, Merkel did not score better with women than she did with men in the last federal election in 2005.

But her gender may be playing a role this year — some 41 percent of women plan to vote for her conservatives next month compared to 34 percent of men.

Merkel, ranked by Forbes as the world’s most powerful woman for a fourth straight year, said she really enjoyed cooking and did so whenever she got the chance, sharing other domestic chores with her husband when their housekeeper was on holiday.

“My husband doesn’t cook, mostly he shops and on Friday I write him a list so he can do the shopping for the weekend,” she said.

Merkel, 55, also divulged details about her look, which was the topic of a hot debate during the federal election campaign in 2005, when she traded a low-maintenance page-boy cut for something more stylish.

“At home I prefer wearing jeans and a jumper or a cardigan,” she said. “As Chancellor I have a make-up artist. But I still have a very pragmatic style: the hairdo must last for 12 or more hours, and I can’t be powdering my nose every two hours.”

A technical fault at a German nuclear power station has thrown a spotlight on one of the few issues that divide the two main parties before September’s election — atomic energy.

But the anti-nuclear Social Democrats (SPD), who have shared power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives since 2005, may be disappointed if they had hoped to win votes from it.

Merkel, forced to accept a phaseout of Germany’s atomic plants under its coalition deal with the SPD, is campaigning on extending the lifespan of nuclear plants which are deemed safe.

By contrast, the SPD is committed to the phaseout which it introduced in a previous alliance with the Greens, and Saturday’s failed restart at the ageing Kruemmel plant in northern Germany has galvanised some of its members into action.

The SPD, trailing Merkel’s conservative camp by more than 16 percentage points and at risk of losing its role in government, is trying to do all it can to mobilise its traditional supporters before the Sept. 27 vote.

SPD Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel pounced on the incident, swiftly taking to the airwaves to push his case that the phaseout should be accelerated. And on Wednesday a Berlin newspaper was strategically leaked a government statement, albeit from 2006-07, which said safety standards at older plants like Kruemmel were not as high as at more modern reactors.

Germans have for decades nurtured an aversion to atomic energy, which supplies just under 30 percent of their power needs.

But as other European countries have started to revive nuclear, opinion has started to shift due mainly to higher energy prices and fears about supply. Pollsters say Germans are now pretty evenly split on whether to support a later decommissioning of plants.

In their campaign manifesto, conservatives argue nuclear is an important part of the energy mix, at least until renewable sources are fully commercially viable.

“If the SPD tries to make this a big election topic, it will not have much success. Public opinion is moving towards an acceptance of atomic energy,” said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of Emnid pollsters.

By Jacob Comenetz

Less than three months before Germany’s election, Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the unlikely subject of a new comic book.

Journalist Miriam Hollstein teamed up with political cartoonist Heiko Sakurai to tell the story, with pictures and speech bubbles, of  ”How Angie became our chancellor”, as the 64-page book is subtitled.

The authors say it is the first comic book devoted to the German chancellor in a country that lacks a tradition of comics and has a reputation for seriousness.

“Germans are ready for this kind of book,” said artist Sakurai, pointing out that the book is not only about entertainment. “Our comic is serious too.”

It tells the story of Merkel’s rapid rise to the top position in German politics despite what critics say is her lack of charisma. Along the way, she outfoxes numerous male opponents who attempt to stunt her progress.

A key turning point portrayed in the book came in January 2002 when Merkel made a secret deal with her conservative rival Edmund Stoiber, then the premier of the southern state of Bavaria who became the conservative candidate for chancellor that year. She promised to support his candidacy in exchange for his supporting her bid to become the head of the party’s parliamentary group.

“It was a daredevil move,” said Hollstein, adding it allowed her to get the upper hand in her party after Stoiber lost the federal election.

A scene from Merkel’s childhood reveals much about her cautious leadership style. She stands on a high diving board as two boys look on. “She’s been there for 45 minutes,” says one.

“Coward, she’ll never jump,” says the other as they turn to walk away.

At that moment, she jumps. And the caption reads, “Even back then one shouldn’t have underestimated her.” 

Sakurai, who has drawn Merkel hundreds of times for German newspapers, said while many aspects of her appearance had changed over time, he had always drawn her eyes in the same way. “This dull look, with the lids half shut, means we can’t look into her soul,” he said. “What does this woman actually want? Where is she going? We don’t really know.”

In the final scene, as her formal rivals Stoiber and former Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder drink themselves into a stupor while watching the returns come in on election night 2009, Merkel gets the final word.

“Cheers! Here’s to the old bird losing!” says Schroeder. Merkel then appears: “You boys only belong to the past, I, however, have gone down in HISTORY!”

But the book leaves open who will win in September’s election.

Should Germany change its election law just a few months before September’s parliamentary vote? That’s the question that has been weighing on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right-left coalition.

But fears that Germany might end up “smelling like a banana republic”, as Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper columnist Kurt Kister wrote, or be mentioned in the same breath as Iran if it ends up tampering with the law so close to the Sept. 27 ballot has helped kill the intriguing idea for the time being. There is also a tacit angst running through Merkel’s conservative CDU and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, that they could end up throwing away a possible victory once again (a 21-point lead melted to 1-point win in 2005) for their preferred centre-right coalition with the Free Democrats by changing the law now.

It’s a quirk of the German mixed member proportional two-vote system that has caused a mess with so-called “Ueberhangmandate” (”overhang seats”). Each voter can cast one ballot for a specific candidate in one of the 299 constituencies and a second ballot for a particular party. The second vote gives the percentage of seats each party wins. But if a party wins more direct seats in the constituency via the first ballot than it should have based on the percentage of second votes, new “Ueberhangmandate” are created. The CDU/CSU and SPD are the primary beneficiaries.

Der Spiegel news magazine cited research from political scientists showing that the CDU and CSU could pick up a record 24 “overhang seats” while the SPD is projected to pick up at most 3 additional seats. That would raise the odds of the CDU/CSU being able to form a centre-right coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and end their loveless marriage with the SPD in the grand coalition. The CDU/CSU currently enjoys a 11-point lead in opinion polls but their lead is expected to narrow by September — as it did in 2005.

The touchy issue of the “overhang seats” will flair up briefly in parliament on Friday, one of the final sessions before the election, when opposition parties put what is likely to be their doomed motion to change the law up for a vote.

The small parties feel justifiably disadvantaged by the law and the Constitutional Court agreed. Germany’s highest court in 2008 ordered changes to the election law to eliminate that built-in advantage that has often given a few extra seats in parliament at each election to the two larger parties, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the SPD. “Overhang seats” helped cement Merkel’s position in the 2005 election and before that it helped the SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling SPD-Greens coalition get a bit more breathing room in 1998 and 2002 with a slightly more comfortable majority. Before that CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the beneficiary of “overhang seats”.

The only catch was that the Constitutional Court in 2008 gave the government three years, until 2011, to make the changes. The CDU/CSU and the SPD were understandably in no rush to change the law that had helped them in past elections. The SPD, as it slowly dawned on them that they might be the big loser in the overhang seats sweepstakes this time, briefly entertained the notion of backing the measure by the Greens and Left party. But that would have immediately brought down the grand coalition and left the SPD out of power and left Merkel running a minority government in a caretaker role until September, according to
Bild columnist Hugo Mueller-Vogg.

And the SPD bolting to back a measure with the Greens and Left party would have immediately prompted a national debate about whether the SPD would be, despite claims to the contrary, preparing the way for a federal alliance with the Left party after the election.

So should Germany quickly change its election law before September and risk looking like a “banana republic” or carry on with a system that puts the smaller parties at a distinct disadvantage?

PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel casts her vote at the Federal Assembly in the Reichstag building in Berlin, May 23, 2009 that re-elected Horst Koehler president. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

The results of European Parliament election have caused deep concern in European Union candidate Turkey, where gains made by conservatives and some far-right parties have been read as a  clear win by the “No to Turkey” camp” and thus a blow to Ankara’s already troubled EU membership quest.

Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Turkish  Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the vote as a “futile effort by those who cannot digest Turkey’s enormity and strategic importance”. He said politicians who vilified Turkey to win votes in the short term would be judged by history.

Erdogan was probably referring to anti-immigration parties  that have openly campaigned against predominantly Muslim Turkey’s accession bid, among them the Dutch Freedom Party of  Geert Wilders who promised that Turkey would not join the  union: “Not in 10 years, not in a million years.”

But last week’s results certainly don’t bode well for Erdogan’s European dreams and come as pressure is mounting for Ankara to push ahead with long-delayed reforms.

The European Parliament has no power to make decisions on EU enlargement, but the European Commission is expected to bear in mind how people voted in the election when shaping policy over coming months. The European Parliament also publishes periodic assessments of progress in Turkey and has been critical in the past of Ankara’s record on human rights, freedom of expression and police mistreatment, to name a few areas.

So-called “friends of Turkey” such as Britain’s Gordon Brown, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Germany’s Social Democrats suffered significant defeats, deepening a sinking feeling in Ankara that it is being left alone to face the wolves.

Meanwhile, the European Commission in December will review its decision to freeze eight of 35 “chapters” — or membership areas — because of Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cypriot vessels.

Will France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who oppose full membership for Turkey and whose parties did well in the European Parliament vote — press for Turkey’s EU membership to be put on hold?

Are Turkey and the EU heading for a clash?  

After his Social Democrats scored their worst-ever result in European elections on Sunday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier might have thought things couldn’t get much worse. But then the man who hopes to beat German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s federal election sat down for a late night television talk show. During the one-hour broadcast, a tense-looking Steinmeier tried to answer the growing number of critics who say he lacks the charisma for the top job — but to many, he only ended up confirming that view. 

Breaking from his normally polite, soft-spoken manner, Steinmeier frequently interrupted presenter Anne Will. When Will presented him with a video clip of SPD activists questioning his ability to energise the party, Steinmeier tried to sell his ”seriousness” as a vote-winning virtue. Perhaps the oddest moment came at the very end, when an unemployed man from eastern Germany complained about his struggles to find work. After quizzing the gas fitter about his search, Steinmeier announced that he had “two or three ideas” about jobs in the man’s region and promised to personally take charge of finding him a job.  To derisive chuckles, his spokesman was asked at a regular government news conference on Monday whether Germany’s other 3.5 million jobless could count on the SPD candidate to personally sort out their work woes. No, the spokesman said, shifting uneasily in his chair: “The situation yesterday was very special.” 

German media were ruthless in their verdict on the man one newspaper called “Mr Colourless”. ”The SPD candidate has rarely looked less confident,” Spiegel magazine said in its online version. Berlin daily Tagesspiegel said: “Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s suffering continues and we suffer with him.” Vice Chancellor in Merkel’s uneasy grand coalition government, Steinmeier has tried over the last few weeks to carve out a new image for himself as a staunch defender of German workers. He pushed aggressively for the government to rescue carmaker Opel, which it did, and backed similar treatment for retail group Arcandor until it became clear that wouldn’t fly. The European vote made clear his party is not winning points on the issue. The SPD scored a record-low 20.8 percent on Sunday, compared to 37.9 percent for Merkel’s conservative bloc.