Mommy’s charm sway Germans

The German federal elections of Sept. 22 were truly exciting with dramatic results, even though they followed a campaign that will go down in history as one of the most boring of all times.
It was always clear that Chancellor Angela Merkel would retain her post as leader of the government. The only real question was whether her conservative party CDU would stay in the government with its coalition partner of the past four years, the liberal FDP, or its coalition partner in the government before the last, the social democratic SPD.
The interesting aspect of Merkel’s win is the surge in her party’s vote i.e. almost 42 percent — the CDU’s best election result since 1994.
While the SPD also made gains, these were far too small to enable it to form their desired coalition government with the Green Party. Yet the biggest shock was the FDP’s failure to reach the five percent threshold required for parliamentary representation by losing two thirds of its vote. Humiliatingly, the FDP will have to vacate its offices in Parliament, the first time since the Federal Republic of Germany was created in 1949. The far-left party Die Linke, whose roots are in pre-unification communist East Germany, now is the third biggest party, closely followed by the Greens. The six-month old anti-Europe AfD barely missed getting into the Parliament, receiving a relatively high and surprising vote just short of five percent.
Since Germany has an electoral system of proportional presentation, there has been only one instance in 1957 when once single party was able to form a government. The last CDU-FDP coalition government delivered only moderate success domestically, with hardly any of the reforms promised at the elections in 2009 being implemented. However, the opposition parties, most importantly the SPD and the Greens, were unable to capitalize on the government’s weak performance, because they could not offer anything substantially better than what the government already did.
In view of the Euro crisis, Chancellor Merkel had to assume the role of a key decision maker in the European Union. While this has resulted in a high profile abroad and some sharp criticism from countries affected by the austerity measures which she imposed, it had little real impact domestically, where a broad consensus exists that German taxpayers’ money should not be used to rescue other countries.
At home, Merkel has continued to implement the labor reforms, which were initiated by her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder of the SPD. Paradoxically, the social democratic chancellor championed long-needed employer-friendly reforms, while conservative Angela Merkel has recently favored a minimum wage. Furthermore, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, Chancellor Merkel scrapped Germany’s nuclear power program at the shortest of notices, with a target date in 2022. This swing to environment-friendly policies by the conservative CDU has seriously weakened the Green Party’s credibility, whose key policies are environment-related, with little else to offer.
Merkel’s key advantage in solving the Euro crisis lay in her “small steps politics”. She is often criticized for taking a long time to make decisions, but her stock response is that, as a scientist by training, it is in her nature to “listen, understand, weigh up all possibilities, and then make a decision”.
Looking at the FDP, their survival in power was always in doubt. Although the party under then-leader Guido Westerwelle managed to achieve an unprecedented election result of 14.6 percent in 2009, Westerwelle soon lost his political capital due to bad party management and proving a bad coalition partner. This resulted in disastrous state Parliament elections, where the FDP repeatedly failed to reach the five percent minimum threshold in some instances. Westerwelle resigned as party leader but stayed on as foreign minister, where his performance has been uninspiring. In Sunday’s election the FDP lost two thirds of its votes, with most voters switching to the CDU or AfD.
Many disaffected voters cited the party’s unwillingness to stay true to its core values, mainly tax reforms. The core of the FDP voters comprises of businessmen, who felt let down by their party.
A CDU-SPD coalition has long been favored by about 70 percent of Germans. However, the SPD’s candidate Peer Steinbrueck, previously a competent finance minister in the last CDU-SPD coalition government, always made it clear that he would not be part of such a deal. So far, the SPD has been ambivalent about entering into a coalition with the CDU because of its bad experience following the last such government, which cost the party many votes in the 2009 election. The SPD’s greatest fear is that being in government with Merkel will require many concessions, since she is known for keeping her partners at a short rein.
A black-green coalition between the CDU and Greens is theoretically possible yet, but may be seen by many Green voters as a betrayal of their core values for the sake of being in government, thus losing the party votes in the long run. A red-red-green coalition between the SPD, Green and Linke would also be possible in principle, but the SPD has repeatedly ruled out this happening because of the ideological stance of the far-left Linke.
It is important to understand that this was not the CDU’s victory, but Angela Merkel’s. Her success lies in her personality that combines what most Germans perceive as their most valuable attributes — modesty, shouldering responsibility, no lust for power, and an aversion to experiments. Her nickname is “Mutti”, a mother who defends and comforts her children’s interests with the best possible sense of their wellbeing.
In the coming four years in power, Merkel must move out of her comfort zone. One major problem is Germany’s ageing population, with a falling birth rate, resulting in a population decrease from 82 million to 80 million since 2005. Germany has to take serious steps to provide childcare and educational facilities, to encourage families to have more children. Secondly, while the Euro crisis has been contained for the time being, Europe is not out of danger. Merkel must confront both problems and develop a clear vision for their solution.
The strength of Germany lies in its economic power. With 80 percent of the economy being made up of small to medium-sized enterprises, nurturing them while also ensuring high social services is the key task for any government.