Germany's Five-Party Reality

Yesterday's elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony changed the political landscape in Germany.  Attracting the most attention was Roland Koch's spectacular fall from grace thanks to his right-wing populist attacks on foreign youth in Germany.  Andrea Ypsilanti's breezy advocacy of social justice won the day in Hesse. But perhaps the biggest surprise was the success of the Left party (Die Linke) in both Hesse, where it enters the state assembly for the first time with 5.1% of the vote and Lower Saxony, where it had even stronger results.  So the Left is no longer just a legacy party of the eastern states - it is a legitimate national power. The Social Democrats, under the leadership of Kurt Beck, have vowed to ignore the Left and try to form a "traffic-light coalition" (Ampelkoalition) of SPD, Greens and Liberals, but that may be impossible.  Five-party representation in the state assemblies is now a fact, and the major parties marginalize the Left at their own peril. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung sees this as a very negative development:

"The elections have not only brought about an unpleasant stalemate between the two largest established parties, but also the entrance of the political left, which calls itself the ‘Left Party.’ It got a foothold in Lower Saxony, too, where the CDU and FDP kept their hold on the government. This has now highlighted the disastrous five-party pattern in West Germany, which is tantamount to the destabilization of the parliamentary system. All established parties treat the Left Party as a bunch of street urchins. But how can a government be formed without them? One practical solution would be a Grand Coalition between the CDU and SPD, clearly a stop-gap method, as the black-red partnership on the federal level has demonstrated numerous times of late.

Last week the FT had very good article about the rise of the Left party:

The Left party, forged from the debris of the east German ruling party after reunification and known then as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), gained a western breakthrough after trade unionists and others rebelled against Agenda 2010, a package of social security and labour market reforms instituted four years ago by Gerhard Schröder, chancellor in the SPD-led government of the time.

As voters turned their backs on Mr Schröder, bringing a string of spectacular electoral defeats and a collapse in SPD membership, the idea of a nationwide, unashamedly leftwing party gained traction. Discontented westerners in the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG), which embodied the resistance to Mr Schröder’s attempt at reconstructing the SPD along market-friendly lines, began talks with the east German PDS. Last June they merged into the Left party under the joint stewardship of easterner Lothar Bisky and westerner Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD chairman and finance minister.

“We are already a nationwide party,” says Mr Bisky. “But we haven’t yet got the seal that our entry in the parliament of a big western state would bring.”

The results from the election yesterday made one thing clear: the German electorate is now clearly left-of-center. When will the government reflect this new reality?

Comments

[erphschwester]

interessant ist, dass sich heute herr koch bereits wieder in pose warf und seinen regierungsanspruch anmeldete. bei einer hauchdünnen mehrheit von 0,1%, die sich nicht einmal auf die sitzverteilung auswirkt, ist das ein wahres schelmenstück, das gleichwohl von frau merkel bekräftigt wird.

tatsache ist, dass jede der mehrheitsfähigen koalitionen von den beteiligten abgelehnt wird: gelb will nicht mit rot-grün, schwarz-gelb würde gern mit den grünen, die aber andersrum nicht. nur in einem sind sich alle einig: mit den linken will keiner, obschon genau das der wille des wählers war und spd und linke sich in ihren programmen sehr nahe stehen.
will frau ypsilanti diese verbindung aus gründen bundespolitischer parteidisziplin nicht? oder will sie tatsächlich nur ihre glaubhaftgkeit beweisen? (warum überhaupt hat sie sich - trotz ihrer inhaltlichen nähe - so sehr von den linken distanziert?) oder ist am ende noch gar keine entscheidung getroffen und man folgt, glaubhaftigkeit hin oder her, schliesslich doch dem erklärten wählerwillen?

alles ist offen, und man darf sich fragen, wie gut demokratische wahlen sind, wenn ihre resultate am ende womöglich am erklärten wählerwillen vorbei geführt werden.