By Peter Annear
BONN — Die Grünen — the German Green Party — aim to establish a "red-green" government following the next all-German elections in 1994, according to party national spokesperson Ludger Volmer, who has proposed seeking a federal coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Volmer believes it is necessary to put pressure on the SPD now to decide whether it will go with the Greens or form a coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) following the election. Volmer says the main aim for the election is to defeat the conservative Christian Democrat-led CDU-FDP government of Helmut Kohl.
Gerhardt Lippe, a member of the Greens' general management committee, told Green Left Weekly that Volmer first raised the coalition strategy at the June meeting of the party's national conference in Cologne. Volmer, a leader of the Left Forum faction, has since written that the Greens must choose between accepting the coalition strategy and disappearing as a party.
Former executive member Jürgen Maier believes the party faces a crisis of perspectives and lacks the leadership necessary to set out on a new course. Since Neumünster, he says, it is has been tied down by internal concerns and office politics.
Customarily, the SPD-coalition strategy has been championed by the Realos faction of Die Grünen. Green-SPD governments have been formed in different Lõnder (state) parliaments, such as Hessen — where Realo leader Joske Fischer, who has long campaigned for a coalition with the Social Democrats in the Bundestag, is environment minister — and in Niedersachsen following the last election. Green-SPD coalitions also hold power in several city administrations, including Frankfurt and Munich.
The concessions Die Grünen would demand from the Social Democrats have not been decided, but Lippe thinks the most important would be an agreement not to allow German troops to be assigned outside the NATO area, something the US administration has pressured the Germans to do since the Gulf War.
On social issues, the Greens would look for 50% representation for women in leading positions (the SPD says only 30%), a living wage of 1200 deutschmarks for everyone, and support for small companies to alleviate unemployment and lessen monopoly control over the economy.
Policy towards the former German Democratic Republic should be
designed to encourage west German companies to invest there. It may be necessary in such cases to guarantee compensation for companies that set up in east Germany and then suffer the effects of outstanding ecological problems and other concerns that now prevent investments.
Following the 1990 electoral debacle, Die Grünen have only two members in the 660-seat Bundestag, both elected from the former GDR on the Greens-Bündnis 90 joint ticket, a coalition of six different groups that won just over the 5% required for representation. In the west, Die Grünen scored only 4.8% and failed to win a seat.
While the Greens' poor results have raised doubts they will qualify for parliamentary representation in 1994, Lippe believes the party's performance will improve sufficiently. In state elections in Hamburg and Rheinland, electoral results have been good.
Lippe thinks Die Grünen were punished in December by voters who did not accept the party's policies in the context of unification but who had not intended to put them out of parliament.
For 10 years Die Grünen insisted that the government must accept the GDR as an independent state, and that unification could only be a step-by-step process. Rapid unification would cause serious social problems, the party said. But the events of 1990 swamped the Greens and the left.
Maier says that, as a result of unification — which has created massive unemployment in the east and big tax rises in the west — the Christian Democrats are more and more unpopular. A progressive SPD leader in coalition with the FDP could pull away Greens votes, he believes. Even though it may survive in the states, such an outcome would spell the end of the federal Greens party.
"I think if there were an election for the Bundestag next Sunday, voters would return to the Greens", said Lippe. "In the polls we now have about 6%. Previously, with 7.8% we had 43 Bundestag members, so this may give us something like 30."