BERLIN, 19 September 2005 — Voters plunged Germany into political limbo yesterday, splitting their ballots between Angela Merkel’s conservatives and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats so closely that both claimed victory.
Projections by leading polling institutes gave Merkel’s conservatives the biggest share of the vote at around 35.2 percent, far less than pre-election surveys had predicted and not enough to form a coalition with their preferred partners, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who stood around 10 percent.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD were just behind Merkel’s party at around 34.1 percent, their partners the Greens were at 8.2 percent and the new Left Party stood at 8.6 percent.
The most likely outcome of an election that ended up far tighter than expected appeared to be a so-called “grand coalition” between Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), their sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the SPD.
Normally, the senior partner and chancellor in such a constellation would come from the strongest party — in this case Merkel’s CDU/CSU by a slim margin, according to latest projections.
“We are the strongest party and have responsibility for forming the next government,” said the 51-year-old Merkel.
But Schroeder, 61, who was counted out before the election by the pollsters despite a tireless, dynamic drive to win himself a third term, refused to concede the top job to Merkel in a speech to cheering supporters last night. “I feel I have a mandate to ensure that in the next four years there will be a stable government in our country under my leadership,” Schroeder bellowed. “There will be no coalition under her leadership with my Social Democrats.” As long as Merkel’s party maintains its lead over the SPD, the only obvious way for Schroeder to stay in office would be to seal a so-called “traffic-light” coalition with the Greens and the liberal FDP.
FDP chief Guido Westerwelle ruled out such an alliance yesterday, as leading members of the Greens have in recent weeks.
Yet another option would be brand new elections, if after weeks of coalition negotiations none of the major parties are able to form a majority government. This has never happened in the history of postwar Germany.
“Germany faces difficult times because the formation of a new government will be tough,” said Thomas Straubhaar, head of the Hamburg-based HWWA economic research institute. “Whatever emerges will be comparatively unstable.”
Merkel, a pastor’s daughter from the former communist east, had made the case that Germany needed to accelerate the structural reforms that Schroeder introduced in his second term to get back on track.
She vowed to cut bureaucracy, ease rules on firing and cut payroll costs to reinvigorate Germany’s once-powerful economy — a path that some experts thought other countries in Europe would follow if she was successful.
But voters appear to have rejected that approach in favor of a more cautious path that financial markets fear will not bring the far-reaching change Merkel had promised.
“The German voters have replied in a way that will not allow the implementation of a model that would be a totally liberal (economic) model,” French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told French radio.
