Regional Elections by Walter Held 29.3.2011 The
coalition government of Angela Merkel of CDU, CSU and FDP in Berlin,
known by the colours of these parties as black-yellow, has lost a
significant amount of its support since the election victory of
September 2009. Four Regional Land elections in 2011 have documented the
melting away of the coalition's voting strength signalled mainly by the
huge decline in the suport for the more rightwing FDP, first in the
northern metropolis of Hamburg in February, then in the south-eastern
Sachsen-Anhalt and now in two south-western states, the Rheinland
Palatinate (RP) and Baden-Wuerttemberg (BW) on Sunday 27th March. The
background was, of course, the efforts to recover from the deep
economic crisis affecting all major capitalist countries. The CDU and
Bavarian CSU had been in coalition with the social democrats (SPD) up to
September 2009; the SPD came out of that period of crisis and cuts and
anti-working class legislation with its worst result in postwar German
history with only 23% of the votes, cementing the social democrats' loss
of 6 million (!) votes over a nine year period, half of its electoral
support. Fully one-third of the party's members left in the period,
disappointed with the SPD's neoliberal line. Many dropped out of
political activity but numbers of activists joined the Linke, the Left
Party boosting its membership overall to 70,000 and its electoral
support throughout most of Germany, with the party gaining seats in
regional parliaments in 13 of the 16 federal states. But
the Linke has only a very small share of the vote in the older western
federal states, often only just clearing the 5% hurdle imposed before
any seats are allocated. In the new eastern states, the Linke enjoys a
quite different level of support, often between 20% and 30% because of
its roots in municipal councils. Thus, in Sachsen Anhalt, the Linke is
the second largest party, evidence of the fact that the Linke is not
one, but two political parties with the eastern party acting as a
tribune for the regional and local interests of the old GDR area, much
as the CSU lobbies heavily for its constituency, Bavaria. In
Hamburg, the SPD did reconquer a majority of votes in February. But in
Sachsen-Anhalt it came in third behind the CDU and the Linke after a
bout of coalition with the local CDU. As if to insult the voters again,
the miserable SPD leadership is choosing to renew a coalition with the
CDU in that Land, rejecting calls by the larger Linke to form a red-red
coalition with a programme of reforms! Disappointed with the SPD
overall, the two latest Land elections display what has happened to a
mass of protest voters; abandoning the SPD in large numbers in RP and
many in BW, those who wanted to show their opposition to Merkel's
policies have voted for the Green Party in record numbers.
Sensationally, in BW the Greens actually overtook the SPD to become the
second largest party and are now probably in a position to take the
leadership and the First Minister post in that Land, breaking the CDU's
hold which has lasted for over fifty years. What
the Greens have done is to initiate and ride the wave of anti-nuclear
power feeling which, although latent but growing for years, has suddenly
been massively fuelled by the Japanese fiasco in Fukumshima. Indeed on
the Saturday prior to the latest Land elections up to 200,000 people
demonstrated in Germany's four largest cities against nuclear power.
Taken together with other local issues such as the unpopular redesign of
the main railway station down in Stuttgart, the Green have been in the
forefront of organising protest demos, sit-ins, marches and steady
propaganda work for decades, whereas the tired old SPD has been pursuing
policies against the interests of the broad population and confining
itself to routinist parliamentary committees and manoevres. Only
recently, having been been thrust out of the Grand Coalition with Merkel
in 2009, has the SPD begun to reawaken and has been present on
demonstrations and rallies, for example against the threatened closure
of the Opel car factories and other issues. The Linke, by contrast, has
been stagnating for years on the sidelines, unable to develop policies
which appeal to the new generation or to break out of 5-8% of voting
strength, viewed with suspicion by most workers and seen as either
utopian or destructive or a potentially new edition of stalinism. No
surprise then, that the Greens have been able to recruit thousands of
young middle-aged and younger, often well educated and conscientious,
people to its flag. In fact the Greens are highly inconsistent in their
politics as has already been and will again be shown in the coming
period. They abandoned their antiwar stance in Afghanistan, they
half-heartedly oppose the plans for Stuttgart, they even took part in a
coalition government in Hamburg with the CDU until thrown out in
February. So it would be wrong to see them as a new left party or even
as a reliable protest party. They purged most of their own leftwing
years ago. And while they preach some good reforms such as abolition of
student fees, their policies on the economy are thoroughly procapitalist
and at best keynesian reformist. Their record in a neoliberal coalition
government with Schroeder appears to have been forgotten. The fact that
such a party can make such large gains is testimony to the bankrupt
position of the SPD in almost all areas. The still-tainted Linke derives
no benefit from this scenario. There is, however, some cause for
optimism that a left wing is beginning to form in and around left
positions in the social democracy. Local and regional ad hoc groups
involving SPD and Linke and some Green councillors and members of
citizens' neighbourhood groups are beginning to join together to move
against the cuts which are starting to cause closures of public services
such as libraries, swimming pools, libraries etc. And it is certainly
true that the old workers' organisations can only regain their former
strength by shaking off the paralysis of Schroeder's neoliberal policies
and returning to representing the real interests of the rank and file
movement. Results in Hamburg Feb 2011 (2008 in brackets) CDU 21.9% (42.6%) SPD 48.4% (34.1%) Greens 11,2% (9.6%) Linke 6.4% (6.4%) Results in Sachsen Anhalt March 2011 (2006 in brackets) CDU 32.5% (36.2%) Linke 23.7% (24.1%) SPD 21.5% (21.6%) Greens 7.1% (3.6%) Results in RP March 2011 (2006 in brackets) SPD 35.7% (46.6%) CDU 35.2% (32.8%) Greens 15.4% (4.6%) Results in BW March 2011 (2006 in brackets) CDU 39% (44.2%) Greens 24.2% (11.7%) SPD 23.1% (25.2%) |
 | |
|
|