Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Germany's Merkel Secures Grand Coalition

German Chancellor Angela Merkel took almost 3 months since the election to arrange it all, but she has secured a grand coalition between her right wing Christian Democratic Union and the left wing Social Democratic Party. The final bit of the procedure was a postal vote by the rank-and-file of the SDP on accepting the deal. It passed with 76% support with 78% voting. However, given the arithmetic of the lower chamber in the parliament, this was the only outcome possible, despite the tensions a right-left deal inherently possesses.

The CDU and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union wound up with 311 seats in the new Bundestag, which was 5 short of a majority. The SDP won 193 seats, the Alternative90/Greens won 63, and the Left Party (ex-communists and fellow travelers) won 64. In theory, the SDP/Green/Left could have formed a government based on simple math, but in politics, simple math is but one indicator of how things are going to go. The SDP said bluntly before the election that it wouldn't work with the Left, while the Greens refused to join any government. Further complicating matters, the Free Democrats, the free-market party in the middle, didn't secure any seats at all, and their role as constant junior partner was written out of the script.

Given that the SDP had decided there would be no coalition that included the Left and that the Greens preferred to keep their powder dry in opposition, the question became upon what terms could the two big parties agree. The answers are in a 185-page document called "Shaping Germany's Future." In large part, the German people are going to get more of the same, but the SDP did manage to get agreement on a higher national minimum wage of 8.50 euro an hour.

The fact that the SDP's rank-and-file have backed this agreement by a margin of 3 to 1, will help immensely because there is not much daylight between the grassroots of the party and the parliamentary leadership. The fact is that there is opposition in both the CDU and the SDP to the arrangement (mostly from younger activists), but they are clearly in the minority in the SDP. That gives the leadership of the party the ability to argue that, no matter how unpleasant a given policy may be, the party as a whole has agreed to it democratically.

Any coalition of this kind is going to be a marriage of convenience. The ideological outlooks of the respective partners are just too divergent to be otherwise. Unlike America, though, the top leaders in both parties seem to have a respect for one anothers' talents, and patriotism. This will make governing not just possible but likely successful.

The chancellor announced the cabinet posts yesterday, and there were a couple of important appointments. CDU member Ursula von der Leyen will be Germany's first female defense minister. Hermann Grohe - the CDU's secretary general - was named health minister. The Free Democrats held this job before the election. The party's new secretary general is Peter Tauber, a young man who becomes a front-runner for chancellor in the future.

Meanwhile, the SDP got six seats in cabinet, including the labor, justice and consumer rights and foreign portfolios. Party boss Sigmar Gabriel will lead a new super ministry that combines the economy and energy issues.

Now comes the hard part -- actually governing. This journal opposes Chancellor Merkel on many issues but considers itself a friend of the German people. One hopes this government is a success for their sake.

© Copyright 2013 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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