Winfried Wolf, Berlin
On October 10, a de facto decision was made to form a new federal coalition government, made up of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the "centre-left" Social-democratic Party of Germany (SPD). If that also means a historic break in post-war German politics — as many observers have claimed — it is yet to be seen.
However, in one aspect the result is truly historic: With the CDU's Angela Merkel becoming chancellor, for the first time in Germany, a woman will head the federal government.
From May 22, the battle for power was dominated by the gender question. On that day, after the SPD lost the North-Rhine-Westphalia state election, then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder decided to hold a new federal election and immediately personalised the campaign with the slogan "she or me". She, a politically inexperienced woman, moreover one coming from the former "communist" east, or me, the worldly wise chancellor, who once in government talked of "women and such fuss [hullabaloo]".
Schroeder reinforced his machismo on the evening of September 18, election day. Before millions of TV viewers he declared in a roundtable debate between party leaders: "Only with me as chancellor can there be a stable government." But the conservative CDU/CSU won 1% more in the elections than the SPD.
On October 10, Schroeder and his SPD had to cave in, accepting as the new chancellor a woman who for 15 years has operated in male-dominated structures and has learned to beat male chauvinists with their own weapons and with her own "networks". The fact that in content and methods Merkel — like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher before her — does not differ from the "men's world" is part of the nature of the capitalist political machine.
The new "grand coalition" is affected by three specific characteristics and one continuity.
First, it is a coalition of losers. The CDU/CSU lost 3.3 percentage points of the vote from the previous federal election in 2002, receiving 35.2% on September 18. The SPD lost 4.3 percentage points, down from 39.5% in 2002. For the first time in German post-war history, both major parties received a combined vote of less than 70%.
Furthermore, the voter turnout was — for Germany — very low — 77.7%, meaning that more than a fifth of the voters did not cast a ballot.
Secondly, the CDU/CSU and the SPD will hold equally strong positions in the new cabinet. The CDU/CSU will take six ministries — economics, defence, interior, families, education, and farming. The SPD will hold the eight ministries — foreign affairs, finance, employment, justice, social welfare and health care, transport, environment and foreign aid. Formally, there will be an 8-to-8 balance in the cabinet, since Merkel and her chancellery minister each will have a vote.
The formal equality in cabinet between conservatives and SPD results from the successful power plays of Schroeder. But it remains to be seen if that will pay off in the end for the SPD. Rather, it will be "mitgegangen, mitgefangen, mitgehangen" ("gone together, trapped together, hung together").
Thirdly, what unites the coalition politically is both major parties' commitment to carrying through pro-big-business "neoliberal" economic policies. There will be further reductions of taxes on capital and additional taxation for working people, especially another increase of the value-added tax. The rolling back of the "welfare state" will be continued. At the same time, militarisation of the republic will be accelerated. Constitutional changes that will allow use of the German army in internal affairs are looming.
Which takes us to the continuity. The new coalition government is just the formalisation of a de facto coalition that has existed for six years between the major parties. Almost all important decisions of the previous SPD-Greens coalition government were supported by a de facto coalition that comprised 95% or more of the members of the parliament.
This informal "grand coalition" pursued the same two key policy points that will shape the new, formal, "grand coalition", and which characterise all neoliberal governments around the world: On the one hand, there is the accelerated redistribution of income from the bottom to the top and, on the other, there is the militarisation of society.
The decisive tax reform in 2000 — which transferred to German corporations about US$94 billion between 2001 and 2005 — was voted for by SPD, Greens, CDU/CSU and Free Democrat MPs. The same broad coalition voted in principle for Agenda 2010, with its Hartz-IV laws that are aimed at eroding working people's pensions and other social welfare entitlements.
Similarly, all foreign deployments of German troops — including the German army's first participation since 1945 in a war (in 1999, against the federal republic of Yugoslavia) — was supported by all four of these parties.
The draft legislation for a European Union constitution received a 97% majority in the German parliament. Only two days before the majority "No" vote in France on this draft constitution, in the German upper house (Bundesrat), which is made up of MPs elected by states, only one state, Mecklenburg-Pomerania (with its SPD-Party of Democratic Socialism coalition government), abstained — all the others agreed to the draft EU constitution with its obligation to increase military spending, as did the SPD-PDS governed state of Berlin.
The continuity between the previously de facto and now formally constituted "grand coalition" government became evident on September 28, when the old Bundestag (parliamentary lower house) had a special last session. The only agenda item was the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan. The "new" MPs could witness from the visitor area how 98% of the "old" MPs said "Yes" to the expanded deployment of the German army at the Hindukush.
It was a kind of inauguration rite for the new Bundestag, an affirmation of continuity of the long existing grand coalition against the working people of Germany and the world, against the environment, and for corporate profit and militarisation.
Once again, a near-100% majority was to be demonstrated, which won't happen too often from now on, as for the first time since 1952 the Bundestag will have a strong fraction to the left of the SPD in the form of more than 50 Left Party MPs.
[Winfried Wolf is a freelance journalist and author. From 1994 to 2002 he was a member of German parliament for the PDS. Today he is co-editor of Zeitung Gegen den Krieg ("Newspaper Against the War").]
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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