Talk Elections

Schroeder quits as party leader
 
 
Mr Schroeder faced growing criticism in his party
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has announced his resignation as chairman of his centre-left party.
"I will concentrate on my work as chancellor and head of government," he told a news conference.

The decision comes after mounting criticism in the party of his economic reform agenda and record low ratings.

Mr Schroeder named Franz Muentefering, the party's current parliamentary group leader, as the man he would like to succeed him as chairman of the Social Democrats.

  I think the difficulties we have had in the process of communication justify concentrating our strength in this way

Gerhard Schroeder  
A special party conference will be held in March to appoint the new leader.

The BBC's Ray Furlong in Berlin says Mr Schroeder has never been a particularly popular leader within his party.

Mr Schroeder admitted as he announced his decision on Friday that his leadership suffered from communication problems with the party's rank and file.

"I think the difficulties we have had in the process of communication justify concentrating our strength in this way," he said.

He told a hastily-arranged news conference that Germany was currently in its "most important reform stage since World War II" and he was committed to this process.

'Closer to left'

Mr Muentefering is seen as being closer to the party's left wing and core voters.

 
Mr Muentefering is a key ally of the chancellor, but more popular in the party
If appointed, he will have to lead the Social Democrats through a marathon of more than 10 state and local elections this year.

Mr Schroeder's "Agenda 2010" reforms, pushed through parliament last year, are particularly unpopular with left-wingers in his party, who say core principles are being betrayed.

He had to repeatedly threaten to resign as chancellor last year to quell left-wing revolts in his party.

Reforms 'essential'

Mr Schroeder says the programme of welfare cuts and labour market reforms is essential to reviving the stagnant German economy and adapting it to an ageing population.

The reforms include a new requirement for patients to pay 10 euros (12.50 dollars) per quarter for doctors' visits, which were previously free.

Germany's Social Democrats suffered several setbacks in state elections last year.

They have also hit an all-time low of about 25% in opinion polls, and lost tens of thousands of members.

Mr Schroeder first became party leader in 1999, a year after he was elected Chancellor.

His great leftist rival, Oskar Lafontaine stepped aside as both chairman and finance minister after losing a power struggle with him.



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It was bound to happen, given that the party never quite warmed to Schroeder; even though party chairman is more of an honorary title which won't necessarily dent his position as chancellor. At least in the short run.

That said, Schroeder's position is becoming increasingly untenable and I do expect Wolfgang Clement to be the Social Democratic candidate for Chancellor at the next election (which, regardless of that, the conservative CDU under Angela Merkel looks set to win).

Maybe Merkel is the next Thatcher! :)

Or maybe not :P

Good to see Schröder going, slimy guy. The CDU will definitely win the next election, and Angela Merkel has been compared to Thatcher. But I don't know how true a comparison that is... ;)

That comparison looks nothing but absurd to me.
Don't expect Clement to be going anywhere. Elections in Germany are won by mobilizing the base, not in the scarcely-existing center. We wouldn't vote for Clement.
This also explains the low standing in the opinion polls. The Social Democrats will rally behind Schroeder again when the election draws near and they take a closer look at the alternative.
There is also the non-small matter of the age structure of the CDU  voters. That party is effectively dying out.
They still may win in 2006 of course. But don't count on it until three days before polls close maximum.

Maybe the SD can nominate Howard Dean. "We're gonna win in Bavaria. And we're gonna win in NRW! And Baden! And Upper Saxony! And then. we're gonna go to Wilhemstrasse, and take back the Chancellory. Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Lewis is right... at the last election Schroeder, who had been written off by the polling firms after the SPD's appalling showing in Sachsen-Anhalt and by the huge lead that the Chief Redneck of Bavaria had, came back from the dead to scrape out a narrow win.

BTW 2002 was the CDU(not including the CSU)'s 3rd worst ever result... their worst ever result was in 1949 and their second worst ever result was in 1998.


There is no way that the SPD is going to win anything in Bavaria.
Trust me on this...

Teh SPD always wins some tiny corners of bavaria. Its traditional strength in the state's far eat and in Nuremberg is waning, but even at their 2003 debacle they still held one direct election seat in Inner city Munich. Meanwhile, in the Munich suburban district of Freising (or was it Erding? Why do all those places have to sound so similar?), they were overtaken by the Greens...
They weren't really written off by the polling firms, btw. All those polls come with a little anaysis, which regularly gets ignored by lazy journalists the world over, but which never failed to mention the extremely high mobilization rate for such an early date in the CDU and the abysmally low one on the left, and the possibility of a scenario like the one that actually happened.

Now it's me turning into John...
The SPD always wins some tiny corners of Bavaria. It's traditional strength in the state's far North east...
That's what I was trying to say.

Ah... So the media misrepresented something? Theres a suprise ;)

Do you know where I can find a map of direct election seats for the 2002 election?
I have the results for each one but without a map I'm not sure where they are (eg. Potsdam-Potsdam-Mittelmark II-Teltow-Fläming II)

http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/wahlen/bundestagswahl2002/deutsch/wkeint2002/karten/index.html

Clement? That's the name of that new patry leader, right?

The last time Schröder managed to cling on by moving against the Iraq War. I don't think the Germans will buy him again, but if they do, it's their loss, imo. And if you try to excite the base, huge cuts in welfare might not be the way to go. And I don't think too much shold be read into age structure, there is always the tendency of people to grow more conservative when they get old.

Thanks :)

Clement is the finance minister. The new party leader will be Franz Muentefering. Not that he'd win an Election either, he's just too boring.
The Gulf War issue was probably not decisive. That flood in East Germany probably helped more...
"if you try to excite the base, huge cuts in welfare might not be the way to go' - true, of course. That's the reason for the current dismal poll standing.
Age structure - have a look at the age structure of the German parties and think again. It's really extreme. And I mean EXTREME. Iran is probably the only country in the world where your age says more about how you vote.

OK, I'll admit to not having looked into it a lot. In our referendum on the euro, 71% of those aged 18-21 voted no, I thought that was a rather extreme age difference.

It's more extreme than in the U.K?!?!!?!

Amazing...

Is it true that Oskar Lafontaine is making a comeback?

Basically you have two peoples living in West Germany - the 60+ and the under 60s. The first go to the polls in large numbers, vote well over 50% CDU/CSU, the rest SPD and a very few FDP. No Greens. The others have much higher abstention rates, SPD usually strongest and Greens weakest in what is effectively a three party system of equals, plus somewhat higher FDP and much higher "protest" vote totals.
East Germany is different, though. PDS, CDU and SPD all get voted for across all age groups, others are purely a phenomenon of the young, turnout is generally lower but I don't know how it breaks by age.

A comeback for Oskar? Well, I have to remind you I haven't been to Germany for about three months. I know there was some, I don't know how serious but apparently not entirely baseless, talk of running him for CM in the Saarland elections in the fall. But they decided against that. I can't really see Lafontaine making a comeback in the SPD, he burned too many bridges behind him when he left. The PDS would certainly take him if he wanted to, but I don't know how many voters he could pull with him in that case. Anyway, he seems not to want to do that, otherwise he could have done it years ago.
 

It would have been worth it just to annoy The Sun...

Over here the 60+ vote Tory and most of the under 25's would never vote Tory under any circumstances...
There are some huge regional differences (eg. Labour won over 60% in the North East and only a bit over 30% in the South East)

I saw a table on that a while ago and the trends certainly pointed in the same direction, but it was nowhere as extreme as in Germany. But if you look at the US, or Italy, or even France, you don't get this split (you get an embryonic verson of it in France, I think)
Then again, I think the main difference is in Labour's strength among old working class people. The turnout problem is worse on your island, and the decline of the Conservatives even more developed.

Clement is Economy and Labour, Hans Eichel is Finance Minister.  ;)



I always considered this as highly unlikely. Saw him yesterday on TV and he ruled out a comeback again. This is just a very popular rumour, which simply refuses to disappear.

Oops.
you're right of course.

Turnout is a problem... just 59% last election... :(
And we are looking at under 20% for the Euro' elections... :(

But yes, the main difference would be the fact that Labour has an unshakable hold on most working class communities from cradle to grave.
Politics in the U.K has always been far more class based than most other countries, but I'm not really sure why.
It might be to do with the size of the coalfields.

There are 14 seperate elections (Land, European etc) this year in Germany.   A SPD insider predicted that if things to not change soon the SPD-Green will lose all 14 to the CDU/CSU-FDP.  SPD are now polling at 24 and CDU/CSU 48.  Schroeder is luckly that the next general election is not until 2006.  On the other hand, to have any chance in 2006 he must act to reform the German economic and pension system but to do that would anger the SPD left wing who in turn could bring down his government.  I guess Schroeder will have to pray for another Bush Middle East adventure like Iran and then he can run again on the anti-American/Bush platform.

Actually SPD is qute competitive in urban Bavaria and have been slowing chipping away at the CSU lead over the years.  Of course the 2002 Federal election campaign destroyed all that as the SPD pretty much ran against Bavaria in a desperate attempt to win the election, a gamble that worked, if just barely.

What is the CDU platform?  I tried their site, but there is no translation to Elglish.  Funny, I wish I would have got better grades in my German classes.

Germans dub everything, including the Simpsons and Nanny. Scary really. I think it's a major factor to lower level of English in many European countries. CDU is paternal conservatives, but I'll let Lewis do the details... :)

I know.  I spent some time in Germany a couple of years ago and I remember they dubbed "King of the Hill."  That pretty much took away half the humor value of show as viewers were deprived the various Texas accents.

I figured as much, but are they for or against the US on the Iraq issue?  Are they for lower or higher taxes, etc?

Lower taxes I am fairly sure. I don't know a lot about Iraq, but I THINK that they were sort of opposed to it.

First Stoiber bascially supported it when he was leading. When Schroeder started to play the anti-American card and it was working, he said he could only support it if we got UN approval.

Stoiber tried to hide the fact that he didn't have any opinion on it and not the slightest inkling of why the Americans might want to go into Iraq. He didn't want to say yes because that would have angered the moderates and didn't want to say no because that would have angered the ideologists, many of whom are almost religiously pro-AMerican on foreign policy issues(though at the same time many of the very same people are easily the most anti-American in terms of "regional" prejudices). So he was caught in a bind there. I remember him saying something very like "Well, can't we decide this when it becomes really urgent, ie after the Election?" during the televised debate. (There were two debates, the first ones ever, and I only saw the second one.)
The CDU voters were and still are bitterly divided on the Iraq war, with a majority against.
Yes, they are nominally for lower taxes and for cutting subsidies, but they stop short of allowing any cuts in subsidies to those who don't need them. They pretty much block any kind of reform, demand one thing then block it the next year when Schroeder takes it up. The German constitution makes this easy, but it's extremely destructive of course.
As per 14 polls... there are state polls in Hamburg on 29th Feb, European Elections and state polls in Thuringia on 13th June, state polls in the Saarland on September fifth and in Brandenburg and Sachsen on 19th September. All the others would have to be local elections I reckon, which are not very important.
Of those state polls, Brandenburg is the only one where the SPD is currently at the helm, so they don't really have anything to lose. 1999 was another anno horribilis for the Social Democrats, after all.

1999 was also pretty bleak for the SPD...

Why is the CDU blocking things that they would normally agree to?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me...

I think at the root of the problem is a basic incapacity among many on the German Right to accept the fact that they are not the majority and they don't own the country. Add a topping of strategy to that (demoralizing the enemy helps winning state polls), and that's what I think is going on.
But when I said they demand one thing and then block it, it's usually minor things. For example:
There was a reform in the Tax Code that was going to be implemented in stages. I think the second stage was two years after the first. Hessen's CM Roland Koch very publicly demanded in 2002 that the second stage be rescheduled to one year earlier to provide relief to tax payers because of the economic downturn. Some months later, Schroeder had the same idea, and Koch led the succesful fight against it in the Bundesrat, because - and he was kind of right in that - part of the revenue lost would have been lost by the states rather than the Bund, and they couldn't afford it because of the Economic downturn. See what I mean?

Yeesssss... but it's still morally wrong...

We may well see a change in Saxony. Apparently Milbradt himself secretly expects a SPD-PDS coalition to beat the CDU. The Hamburg elections should be interesting, especially now that the whole Schill soap opera is finally over and done with.

Btw, about Clement: I always thought he was a bit of a Chancellor-in-the-making? Or at least that's how the media seem to portay him.

The media, the media...
Well, they made Schroeder chancellor, so maybe I shouldn't write it off.
But Clement is older than Schroeder and his relations with the Green party are. or at least were when he was CM of NRW, more than a bit strained. So I doubt it.

According to the Spiegel, when Schroeder announced his decision in some leadership circle, Clement was the only one who tried to argue against it. He seems not to like the increase in power of his former colleague at the NRW cabinet table...
Also, the General Secretary of the SPD Olaf Scholz has also been sacked (yeah, asked to resign). He will be replaced by Klaus Uwe Benneter. Benneter once was a far leftie, in fact he was expelled from the SPD in 1977 and readmitted in 1983. He seems to be quite close to Schroeder though. He's not exactly well known, I don't know why they chose him. Anyway, he too ,like Muentefering will take over sometime in march.

Does Germany have a Trades Description Act?

I'm not sure it's applied to political parties...Anyway this used to be Johannes Dyba's point. He was the Catholic bishop of Fulda, he was quite ultraconservative and quite vocal and quite witty at times, too, and he said something on those lines several times.
Always got some CDU backbenchers up to protest...

Aren't most members of the SPD/Green coalition ex-far lefties? Fischer, Schily, Trittin, Thierse...

With Fischer, Schily and Trittin you are right. But I wouldn´t call Thierse a "ex-far leftie". After all, he´s from the former GDR and was one of the founders (and short-term chairman) of the SPD there. Although he was probably always a "leftie", he was also clearly in opposition to the regime there and therefore not "far left".

I wouldn't include Schily either, actually. Yes, he defended RAF terrorists as a lawyer, but by that definiton one good friend of mine is an Islamist now. Yes, he was a member of the Green party in the 80's (when kiddo me explained the way to the next Ice Cream Parlour to him), but he was on the party's moderate wing. Yes, he was involved in the campaigns of the CND period, but by that definition Neil Kinnock and Walter Mondale are far left (rather than just left). So, no, Schily was never on the far left, though he once wasn't nearly as centrist as he is now.

While we´re at... asked about the possibility of coalitions between the CDU and the Greens on state level Michael Glos, leader of the CSU regional group within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, said today that he opposes coalitions with "eco-stalinists" and "former terrorists" like Fischer or Trittin (what the hell is an "eco-stalinist"?).

Like an eco-fascist, I guess... ;)

Hey, according to that test I took, if I were a European, I'd be a Christian Democrat, so I don't like what you are saying about my party. ;)

I wouldn't want to be a Christian Democrat that much...just look at the Italian Christian Democrats...

The Christian Democrats of the 1st Republic were not really a party... more like a very, very, very big coalition of special interests... kind of like the LDP in Japan...

Or the Republicans... ;)

Uhhh, acctually, that really describes the Democrats better.

Now, now... Bush isn't linked to the Cosa Nostra... ;)

I was just making a little joke, both American parties have a lot of special interest organisations behind them, though not as much as pre-1900 era, perhaps.

LOL, that's overreacting just a little. Didn't Kohl try similar (if not equally extreme) slurs against Schily and the Green Party in the 1998 election? I suppose it goes to show that negative campaigning doesn't always pay off. :)

Well, the "former terrorists" bit is part of CDU/FDP/CSU radical wing standard rhetoric. Glos always was a man for tough soundbites. Consider it part of his inofficial job description...Anyways it isn't a possibility because very few Greens would be ready to do that. Green/CDU coalitions on the local level (and there've been a few) have always caused collapses of the Green vote at the next poll.

The leader of the Swedish Center Party got murdered by the media for referring to Fischer as a former terrorist.

Sorry, I think I got some memories mixed up there...The standard jibe is the one about defending terrorists (aimed at Schily, Stroebele, Hessen's former attorney general Rupert von Plottnitz (Greens), all of whom did that, or sometimes just at the Green party).
I've heard Fischer called a former terrorist before, but it is well of the "acceptable" radar, or used to be.
Fischer was no terrorist, of course. But he definitely was a Street Fighting Man, and he and his friends did some kind of illegal militia training in the Taunus for a while, and some of these people later ended up in the Terrorist groups. Definitely Fischer was lucky never to have been banged up in jail (he spent nights in prison, but that's all. Heck, my father did the same.)

I can´t say much about Schily or Ströbele, but I think from the late 60ies until the mid-70ies Fischer was some sort of a left-wing extremist anarchist who opposed the "fascist police state" in West Germany as he saw it. But he was never a terrorist in the meaning of the word. He never blew things up or kidnapped/killed people or things like this.

I believe the major political turning point in his life was when a Air France plane was hijacked by a terrorist command in 1976 or so. And some of the terrorists involved in the hijacking were old "comrades" of Fischer. This event was so a major shock for Fischer that he broke with the violent left-wing movement and began to turn back to democracy.

The term is "Sponti", ie one who believes in spontaneous action (rather than in having an organization, participating in elections etc)

I seem to remember a picture of him and some others kicking a policeman?

Well, I wasn't implying that either...

We know you weren't, but a lot of conservatives are.

Well, Hamburg...
1997
SPD 36,2
CDU 30,7
Greens 13,9
DVU 4,9 (right-wing extremist - that's just below the threshold to win seats)
StattPartei 3,8 (local outfit, SPD's partner in government 93-97)
FDP 3,5
others 7,0 (that seems awfully high to me, but I don't have any details)

These elections led to a Red-Green coalition.

2001
SPD 36,5
CDU 26,2
Schill 19,4 (the party was actually called Partei Rechtsstaatliche Offensive, Law and Order Offensive Party, but the official abbreviation was Schill)
Greens 8,5
FDP 5,1
others 4,3

This led to a CDU-Schill-FDP coalition, which recently collapsed

Last poll (margin of error for major parties: 4%points either way)
CDU 46
SPD 29
Greens 14
FDP 3,5
Schill 3 (his new shop)
pro 1,5 (the remainder of his old shop after they kicked him out)
others 3

That would be enough for von Beust to govern alone, but a red-green victory is easily inside the margin of error.

Beating a policeman is neither appropriate nor legal, but it isn´t exactly something I would call "terrorism".

No, I wouldn't either, I was referring to the history of militant extremism of some members of the German left.