The World from Berlin
Regional Minority Government 'Doomed to Failure'
The fate of a new minority government in North Rhine-Westphalia is being watched by party strategists across the political spectrum in Germany. What happens here, after all, could have a huge effect in other states, and even on the political landscape in Berlin. The coalition of center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens that took power on Wednesday in NRW will have to rely on support from other parties to get any reforms through parliament. In particular it will be looking to the hardline Left Party for backing.
Those on the right now warn that the new constellation gives too much influence to the Left Party, which has roots in the former East German Communist Party (SED), and they argue tolerance of the SPD-Green coalition will pave the way for an eventual coalition of all three parties at the federal level. While the SPD does govern with the Left Party in both the states of Berlin and Brandenburg it insists that the party -- an amalgam of former eastern communists and fringe far-left groups from western Germany -- is still not ready to govern nationally.
Relations between the Left Party and its closest allies -- the Social Democrats and Greens -- have become, if anything, more strained of late. In June a federal group of Left Party members refused to back Joachim Gauck, the other two parties' candidate for the German presidency. Their abstention saw Chancellor Merkel's candidate Christian Wulff elected -- albeit after three rounds of voting.
Meanwhile, the new government in North Rhine-Westphalia has attracted criticism for announcing that state borrowing for 2010 will have to drastically increase from a planned €6.6 billion ($8.44 billion) to €9 billion ($11.5 billion). The SPD-Green coalition says the debts are necessary due to the failed policies of the outgoing governing coalition of Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats.
The German press on Thursday mulls the new coalition and its implications for federal politics. Predictably the more left-leaning newspapers are largely positive, while those of a more conservative bent warn of disaster.
The conservative Die Welt writes:
"In everything they initiate, the Social Democrat Kraft and the Green Löhrmann will have to take into account the position of the Left Party, above all, if they want to do more than act as a transitional government ahead of new elections. The increase of new borrowing by almost €3 billion this year alone is therefore not just a fiscal adventure. This new debt is the first political kowtowing to those who are supposed to tolerate the government. An 11-vote abstention was never so dearly bought."
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"A minority government is not democratically inferior: Its value can reveal itself ... in the day-to-day work of parliament. A minority government has to approach the opposition with open hands in order to win support. It is not just the SPD-Green coalition that is entering a learning phase, but also the opposition."
"A minority government is regarded here as something irregular. The new SPD-Green coalition has a chance to demonstrate that the irregular can be regular. NRW can send out a signal that in tough situations, difficulties can be overcome."
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"The circumstances are much tougher than the SPD and Greens will admit. The experiment is doomed to failure. Kraft's prospects of pushing through important projects are minimal. Her only realistic option for getting a majority in the state parliament lies with the Left Party. However, they are attached to some fundamentalist notions and are politically unpredictable."
"The CDU and the FDP, on the other hand, can take advantage of Kraft's precarious situation as head of a minority government to deflect from their own failures. They will be doing everything to undermine the SPD-Green government and will refrain from any cooperation with Kraft's project even on policies that reflect their own politics."
"If the SPD-Green minority experiment fails as soon as autumn with the presentation of the 2011 budget, then the SPD and Greens will be on the brink of the abyss in terms of strategy. It won't matter how poorly the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition (in Berlin) continues to govern, they won't be able to offer any alternative. Relations with the Left Party would be so damaged that the chancellery would become unattainable for the SPD."
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
"Kraft and Löhrmann have a huge opportunity for a new start. The question is whether the first two women to head the most populous state will also have enough courage. Their SPD-Green minority government must not be an interregnum. It won't fail at the hand of the Left Party -- on two conditions. First, the SPD should no longer treat Left Party members as pariahs, as they did during the campaign. And the Left Party has to stick to its commitment to support reforms by the SPD-Greens as long as they do not fundamentally contradict their own political aims. That will not always be easy for them. The NRW Left Party has a strong penchant for verbal radicalism. But there is every indication that they realize how much is at stake."
"All the words and gestures of reconciliation that Kraft had for her predecessor and his cabinet could not hide the fact that she is starting her government with an unresolved contradiction. Her repeated invitations to all the parties to work together do not tally with the call before and after the election for fundamental 'political change' in North Rhine-Westphalia. A government whose first act is to revoke important decisions made by the previous CDU-FDP coalition cannot expect those parties to cooperate."
"As a rule, the votes for a majority will only be available from the Left Party. … In practice that will lead to a weakening of the government. Every cabinet decision will have to take the Left Party's position into account."
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