Chancellor GERHARD Schroeder’s narrow victory in Germany’s election is seen by many as bad news for Germany. At home, a government has been re-elected that even many of those who voted for it agree is economically incompetent. Abroad it faces unprecedented isolation: within the EU, where its existing policies have already produced rifts with its most important European ally, France, but also with Brussels and Euroland because of its budget deficits; and internationally too. When the US greets the result with the declaration that relations have been “poisoned” because by the SPD’s election campaign, as it did yesterday, it is clear that the 50-year old special relationship between the two is dead.
But it is the perilously thin margin of Schroeder’s victory that is presents Germany with its most immediate headache. With his so slender majority in Parliament, he will be hostage to those in his own party and the wider coalition who want this policy or that. When all it will needs is just five parliamentarians to say no to a government policy, the result will, at best, be inaction, at worst, disintegration. So there will be neither the tax cuts nor the business-friendly reforms that the stagnating economy desperately needs. Instead, there will be more budget deficits in excess of the permitted EU limits, which, in turn, means more rows with Brussels and Germany’s neighbors and more damage to the euro.
It is not only the dire economic consequence of the ruling coalition’s wafer-thin victory that now hangs over Germany; the coalition now has the dangerous potential to split. Schroeder is now totally dependent on the Greens. Unfortunately they are themselves something of a coalition when it comes to policies. That makes the increase in their number in Parliament, with members holding widely divergent views on particular issues, a factor for instability, not stability. Nor can their support for their leader, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, be taken for granted: his popularity with the electorate is the reason for the increase in their vote but many party members find the very idea of being led by anyone uncomfortable. The result will be a permanent expectation of backroom deals, rows and the coalition’s collapse.
That is for the future. For the moment, though, the most striking aspect to this election is the way in which foreign politics, in particular the Middle East, played so dominant a role. It was not just Schroeder’s stand on Iraq. The Middle East is a two-edged sword in Germany: the conservatives’ partners, the FDP, also suffered when its deputy leader attacked the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, leading to accusations of anti-Semitism.
Of course, the recent floods and the government’s rapid response also helped stem the decline in support for Chancellor Schroeder; but there can be no doubt that foreign politics were the bigger issue for many voters. In times of prosperity, that is not so strange — but not when there are severe economic problems. Clearly, large number of Germans decided to ignore soaring unemployment and economic difficulties, although presumably not those suffering the effects directly.That also points to a divided Germany.
