The U.S. and European media are focusing heavily on the disastrous defeat of the Social Democrats, and an apparent shift of the electorate to the center-right, in their analyses of the German elections on September 27, which reinstalled Christian Democrat Angela Merkel as Chancellor.
Many commentators also use the German results as a peg to write about the broader decline of socialism in Europe, in contrast to the leftward move in the United States with the election of President Barack Obama last November.
Under the headline SPD Debacle Shows Agony of European Centre-Left, Paul Taylor of Reuters writes: “It was a black night for Germany’s Social Democrats. Their catastrophic general election score of just 23 percent was by far the worst since the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949.”
In The New York Times, Steven Erlanger reports from Paris that “the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse” is haunting Europe and that the situation in France is even worse for the left. He concludes with an expert’s viewpoint that Socialism will have no future in Europe unless it undertakes sweeping and difficult reforms. Analysts on America’s Fox News Channel say the German poll results are a rejection of the kind of leftish policies that Obama is pursuing in the United States.
Too few analysts, however, note that the defeat of the SPD (Germany’s Social Democratic Party) was matched by a decline in support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and big swings away from the two main parties toward both right and left. The big winners were the open-market, pro-American Free Democrats (FDP), who will now form a coalition with Merkel.
But parties to the left of the Social Democrats, the Left Party (heir of the former East German Communist Party) and the pro-environmental, internationalist Greens, made significant gains. It is an over-simplification to regard the elections as simply a huge setback for socialism, when the vote was just as much a reaction against the centrist “Grand Coalition” of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats that has governed Germany for the past four years.
In an opinion piece published by Germany’s Spiegel Online, entitled Welcome to the New Germany, Claus Christian Malzahn equally goes overboard with the following comments:
After Sunday’s election, Germany’s political landscape has been shaken up, perhaps for ever. Angela Merkel’s conservatives will be able to form a coalition government with the business-friendly FDP, but the balance of power between the two parties has fundamentally shifted. And the once-powerful Social Democrats may never recover from their defeat.
That may or may not be so, but it is most unwise to use the words “for ever” and “never” in making political predictions.
On the other hand, Malzahn makes an interesting point, largely neglected elsewhere, that Merkel’s own position as leader has been weakened by the relatively poor showing of her CDU party. Malzahn says:
The charge that Merkel handed victory to the competition [the FDP] because she had such a low profile in her position as leader of the conservatives will not be long in coming from within the ranks of the Christian Democrats. The attack on her position as party leader need not happen immediately, but it is safe to assume that the regional CDU governors will soon be discussing and preparing it. There is no shortage of candidates who have their eye on the CDU leadership.
This means that, over the coming months, Angela Merkel will be waging a battle on two fronts: in a coalition where she will be fighting for influence with the FDP as junior coalition partner, and within her own party.
A report by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public broadcaster focuses on the internal upheavals that now lie ahead for the SPD: “The big losers of Germany’s general election were the Social Democrats; a miserable showing pushing them into the opposition for the first time in 11 years. In the wake of electoral disaster, heads have begun to roll.” Deutsche Welle goes on to detail the shake-up of policies and personalities that has already begun.
The international version of Spiegel Online gives a useful summary of reactions in Britain and France. In Britain, it reports:
The Guardian said that Merkel’s performance over the last four years shows that she is “Germany’s better social democrat” and that the risk-averse Germans had elected her because they are content with what they have. “Despite her huge personal popularity, she led her center-right Christian Democratic Union to its second poorest result,” the paper added. “It leaves her vulnerable to backstabbing within her party.”
In his blog, Gavin Hewitt, the BBC‘s Europe editor, wrote that Mer”el’s coalition with the FDP will now give her “the opportunity to reveal where her true instincts lie.” At the same time, he noted that “her record in power suggests she will be pragmatic.”
In France, according to Spiegel Online:
Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy gushed with joy that his closest ally on the international stage emerged even stronger from the election. Even before the official election results had been published, Sarkozy had sent Merkel a congratulatory note wishing her “every success in the great task that the Germans are entrusting you with for the second time.” He signed the note: “Your Friend, Nicolas Sarkozy.” But the left-leaning Paris newspaper Libération appeared puzzled by the “German contradiction” that would have a pro-business party join the ruling coalition in the midst of a financial crisis. It predicted that “Supermerkel” will “surely make pragmatic politics with the FDP, albeit more in a more liberal manner than before.”
Continuing the tale of woe for center-left parties, Bloomberg reports that in the UK the ruling Labour Party under Prime Minister Gordon Brown has fallen to third place in an opinion poll (behind the opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) for the first time since 1982. It adds that Labour Party activists have received a campaign timetable pointing to a general election on May 6, 2010, the date that has been considered the most likely for some weeks. If current trends persist, Labour is heading for a resounding defeat in the election, which must be held by early June at the latest.
Written by Reginald Dale
