Opinion
標題:Welcome to the New Germany
新聞來源: (須有正確連結)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651672,00.html
By Claus Christian Malzahn
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.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has probably saved her chancellorship -- but the
price that her conservatives will have to pay for it is high. The election
result for the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian
sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is lower than in 2005.
Nevertheless, she can form a coalition government with the business-friendly
Free Democratic Party because support for the FDP has increased in a way that
until recently pollsters would scarcely have thought possible.
However, the interior architecture of the new Merkel-led alliance will be
fundamentally different from "black-yellow" coalitions -- the name is
inspired by the parties' official colors -- of the past. In the governments
of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, it was always clear who was calling the
shots, because the Christian Democrats had four or five times as many seats
as their liberal junior partner. That has now changed -- perhaps forever.
In the new constellation, Merkel will hardly be able to keep the promise that
she made shortly before the election, namely that in a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition
she would soften any demands by the pro-free market FDP that were too
radical. Given the fat majority that the Christian Democrats and the FDP have
in Germany's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, it looks like Merkel
will be able to have a smooth ride in terms of governing -- but whether the
weakened Christian Democrats will be able to set the course seems doubtful.
FDP leader Guido Westerwelle will be taking the initiative in the future
government. The big question is whether he can do something with the support
that the voters have given him.
Internal Power Struggle
The charge that Merkel handed victory to the competition 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, including the powerful governors of the states of Hesse, Lower
Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. 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.
The wounded CSU will be of no help to Merkel in her bid to keep power over
her coalition, but rather an obstacle. The FDP looks set to get more than
twice as many Bundestag seats as the CSU, which only got 41 percent of the
vote in Bavaria Sunday -- its worst result in decades. In Kohl's day, the CSU
and FDP were either equally strong or the Bavarians were in the lead. This
too marks a historic turning point for German politics; here too, the
CDU/CSU-FDP power relations are shifting in favor of the FDP.
Nevertheless, the big loser of Sunday's election is still undoubtedly the
center-left Social Democrats. Their result is below even the historic low
that the party suffered in 1953 and which took it years to recover from.
After 11 years in government, the party, whose status as one of Germany's two
main parties seems to be in question since Sunday's election, is going into
the opposition. The party is only 10 percentage points ahead of its upstart
far-left rival, the Left Party. The Left Party is the result of a merger
between the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) -- the successor to the
communist party that ruled East Germany -- and WASG, a group of trade
unionists and disgruntled former SPD members based in western Germany, and
has managed to significantly eat into the SPD's share of the vote since it
was founded in 2007.
Up in the Air
Left Party co-chair Oskar Lafontaine was once the chairman of the SPD. If it
was his goal to humiliate the party that he left in 1999, then he has
succeeded. It's safe to assume that a battle will now break out within the
SPD for the subjugated soul of German social democracy. Everything else,
however, is up in the air.
SPD chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier has failed in his attempt to
at least force a continuation of the current "grand" coalition with the CDU
in a bid to win time. One can assume that almost everything is now up for
negotiation: the role of the current two leaders, Steinmeier and party chair
Franz Müntefering, in any case, but also the party's current moderate
left-leaning politics, which its supporters in the end apparently saw only as
a collection of empty promises. Which of the party's current policies will be
sacrificed first? The raising of the retirement age to 67? Germany's
controversial military mission in Afghanistan? The last legacy of the
1998-2005 SPD-Green Party coalition government under Gerhard Schröder, which
marked a shift to the center for the SPD, will now be hawked off. But things
do not necessarily have to stop there.
The mood that is now gripping the SPD could easily be described as panic.
Already on Sunday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier staked his claim to be the party's
floor leader in parliament. By doing so, he wants to send out a message of
continuity during this hour of worst possible defeat. But the developments on
Sunday night look less like continuity than a break with the past. Germans
are experiencing the end of an SPD as they have known it since the 1960s. It
was a party that was embedded in the leftist mainstream of West Germany but
that also supported ties with Western allies, a party that developed policies
not just for its political base, but also for the entire country. But in
terms of its share of the vote, the SPD now has more in common with a special
interest party than a major political force. What that means in political
terms will now be the focus of bitter internal struggles.
When the Slaughter Is Over
Up until now it was considered a sure thing that the Left Party and the SPD
would have to undergo a rapprochement if either party wanted any real chance
of governing at the national level. But after Sunday, Left Party leaders
Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine will be disputing this premise. With results
that are just 10 points shy of the Social Democrats and even better than the
Green Party, the Left Party won't need to be making any quick decisions. The
Left Party leadership will wait for the SPD, once the internal party
slaughter is over, to come to them. The other opposition parties, the Greens
and the SPD, will now have to come to terms with the Left Party's new role as
the driving force within the left-wing camp. And the Left Party itself will
be perfectly satisfied with that role for the time being.
The Greens have gained votes, but why? Internally, the party has long been in
the centrist mainstream, even if its leaders and members perceive themselves
to be part of the leftist camp. But how can the Green Party hope to get into
government with an SPD that has fallen so far and a Left Party that is
politically regressive? After Sunday's vote, the Greens are the only party
which is in a position to shake up Germany's established political camps,
which until now have consisted of the CDU/CSU and FDP on one side and the SPD
and Greens on the other. But it is doubtful whether they will have the
courage to do so. The first answer to that will come soon in the states of
Saarland and Thuringia, where the Greens are currently in coalition
negotiations following recent state elections. In Saarland, for example, the
Greens have to decide if they want to form a coalition government with the
SPD and Left Party or with the CDU and FDP -- and they are keeping their
options open.
After Sunday's election, the old West Germany, with its capital in the sleepy
town of Bonn and its clear-cut political camps and power centers, is nothing
more than a blurry memory. But the clearer the new political order becomes
over the coming months, the more Germans will miss the sedate old days.
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「就像其他各類集體主義一樣，種族主義也尋求不勞而獲。它尋求自動獲得知識﹔它尋求
自動評價人們的品質而忽略運用理性或道德判斷的責任﹔而更重要的是，它尋求自動的自
尊（或偽自尊）」
Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness>
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