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German election photo-finish
AFTER BEING neck-and-neck throughout polling day on 22
September, the social democratic SPD and Greens held onto their Red-Green
coalition government but with a very small majority. The right-wing conservative
CDU/CSU candidate Edmund Stoiber was stopped.
Many workers and youth voted for the SPD and Greens, despite
their anti-working class policies, to stop what they saw as a shift to the
right. The capitalists had indeed been promoting a change of government because
they hoped Stoiber could speed up the attacks on workers’ living standards and
rights. Many workers and youth were relieved that Stoiber was defeated but they
will discover that they will be the losers under continuing Red-Green social
cuts and privatisation.
Two months ago opinion polls had the conservative and
liberal parties well ahead. This reflected four years of neo-liberal policies.
The SPD and Greens had created the possibility for a comeback of former
chancellor Helmut Kohl’s hated CDU/CSU, which had been thrown out of office in
1998 as the working class attempted to change the direction the country was
going in. But nothing changed. Gerhard Schröder’s government continued where
Kohl had left off and the SPD paid for this on election day. Compared with four
years ago it lost 1,694,000 votes, mainly amongst industrial workers.
Its survival was mainly due to two issues: the summer floods
in Eastern Germany and US war plans against Iraq. The government reacted quickly
to the floods, successfully presenting itself as acting in the interests of the
victims. Schröder was seen as doing something concrete to help the East,
despite its record levels of unemployment and continuing depopulation.
And Schröder adopted an anti-war position and clashed with
George W Bush’s administration. This was not because of a principled
anti-militarism. The government has sent German troops abroad 17 times in the
last four years and participated in the attacks on Serbia and Afghanistan. His
rhetoric, rather, reflected the interests of the ruling class. German bosses
fear that a regime change after a US-led war would lead to an Iraqi government
obedient to the US, minimising the profit-making prospects of German companies
in the country. They also want to counter US unilateralism. During the election
Schröder went as far as to say that his government would not support a war even
if it were led by the United Nations. This was a tactical manoeuvre to mobilise
electoral support while accepting a significant worsening of US-German
relations. From the point of view of the German capitalist class, however, he
went too far. Schröder will not be able to maintain that position once a war
has begun. This issue, or social and economic turmoil, could trigger a quick
crisis in the new government which certainly will be unstable.
One important phenomenon is not reflected in the results:
the growing alienation from the established parties. The mass of workers and
young people did not vote enthusiastically for any party. The opinion polls over
recent months were erratic. A few weeks before the elections 40% of the
electorate said that they were undecided who to vote for. The whole campaign was
very apolitical, concentrating on personalities. On domestic issues differences
between the mainstream parties could only be seen with a magnifying glass.
The turnout fell from 82.3% to 79.1%, with 1,320,000 fewer
votes cast than in 1998. The vote for smaller parties, including the far-right,
was also lower – the far-right down from 4.4% to 1.8%. This was because a
layer wanted to prevent a Stoiber-led government, but also many far-right voters
supported Stoiber who has a record of racism. But while Stoiber was able to
massively increase the vote of the CSU in his native Bavaria by 987,000 (27%),
in the rest of Germany its sister party, the CDU, only increased its vote by
160,000. In nine of the 15 regional states outside Bavaria the CDU vote actually
fell.
The Greens scored a large rise in their votes, gaining
808,000, at 8.6% their best ever score. This was in marked contrast to the falls
they suffered in other elections held since they formed the Red-Green coalition.
This increase was based on their opposition to war in Iraq, an increased
environmental awareness following the floods, and because a layer of SPD
supporters gave their second vote to the Greens. In Germany there are two votes:
the ‘first’ for a constituency representative, the ‘second’ for a party
list. The SPD’s ‘second’ vote was 1,571,000 lower than its ‘first’ and
many of these went to the Greens.
The big loser was the left-wing Partei des Demokratischen
Sozialismus (PDS – the former state party in Stalinist East Germany). The PDS
has a mass base in the East but is a very small force in the West. In the East
it controls many councils and has entered two coalitions with the SPD at federal
state level, where it has implemented cuts and privatisation. Especially in
Berlin, the so-called ‘Red-Red’ coalition is implementing the sharpest
attacks against working-class people in the city’s post-war history. A massive
cuts package was announced just five days before the Bundestag (parliament)
election! And the most prominent PDS leader, Gregor Gysi, has been forced to
step down as senator for economic affairs in Berlin for using air miles
accumulated on government business for his own personal travel.
The PDS was rewarded for these policies with an electoral
collapse. It lost nearly 600,000 votes, failing to make the 5% hurdle which is
the minimum to be included in the allocation of the proportional Bundestag
seats. It won just two constituencies and therefore will only have two MPs. This
is a disaster for the party and will probably lead to a deep crisis within the
PDS. It is a setback for the left. Many who gave their vote to Schröder or the
Greens to stop Stoiber will regret that there is no left-wing opposition in the
Bundestag once the government starts further attacks on the working class and
changes its course on the war.
This was not, however, a defeat for socialist policies,
quite the contrary. The PDS is socialist in name only. Its electoral decline was
a rejection of the right-wing policies of the leadership. Three hundred thousand
former PDS voters did not vote at all, as workers and youth who had hoped for a
genuine alternative got the same old and tired social democrat-type politics and
turned their backs on the party.
A Green candidate, Christian Ströbele, proved that it is
possible to win elections on a left-wing programme. He was put on the bottom of
the party slate for proportional seats in Berlin, as punishment for his
opposition to the Greens’ previous pro-war policies in Yugoslavia and
Afghanistan. Yet he became the first ever Green candidate to win a constituency
seat. He did this on the basis of a critical stand against the Greens’
leadership, even using the slogan ‘to vote Ströbele means to torture Fischer’
(the Greens’ leader and foreign minister). Ströbele claimed to be ‘social
and a socialist’.
The move to the right by the PDS will probably continue.
This poses the need for a new workers’ party even more sharply. The working
class is without strong political representation and this absence will be felt
more and more as the Red-Green coalition continues on its neo-liberal course.
Out of the conflicts of the coming years will grow the idea that such a
representation has to be formed.
With the economy stagnating, high-level unemployment, and
huge pressure for cuts in public spending, the working class will have to fight
back sooner or later. This year has already seen a number of strikes involving
metalworkers, printers, bank and building workers and other sectors. The trade
union leaders have tried to avoid open conflict with the Red-Green coalition and
openly campaigned for a vote for them. But dissatisfaction is widespread amongst
the trade union rank and file and the public-sector wage round later this year
could see the first open conflict between the unions and the government. This is
even more likely now as the government is under intense financial pressure
because it cannot keep to the EU’s budget deficit criteria. The re-election of
the Red-Green coalition can only speed up the breach between the unions and the
SPD.
Sascha Stanicic,
Sozialistiche Alternative
Socialist election
campaign
SOZIALISTICHE ALTERNATIVE (SAV),
the Socialist Party’s sister organisation in Germany, stood seven
first-past-the-post constituency candidates (out of 23 to the left of
the PDS nationally). SAV polled 2,192 votes.
The campaign focused on the
anti-working class policies of Schröder and Stoiber and emphasised the
need for a new workers’ party. SAV participated in a 40,000-strong
demonstration organised by Attac and the trade union youth organisations
one week before the election against neo-liberal policies, social cuts
and war.
We organised a public
meeting after the demo with more than 120 people in attendance to hear
speakers including Joe Higgins, the Socialist Party TD (MP) from
Ireland. |
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