Germany black and red: how could the early elections in Germany end?

/Pogled.info/ Trump’s victory in America contributes to the collapse of the already shaky “traffic light” coalition

After Olaf Scholz fired German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, all other representatives of the Free Democratic Liberals (FDP) left their positions in the German government after their leader. Party control is taken seriously in Germany.

For now, this does not mean an automatic dissolution of the government. Alternatives have already been found for those who have left, and most of their places are occupied by politicians from the second minority in the coalition – the Union 90/Greens party . But we can now put an end to the reign of Chancellor Scholz in Germany.

According to the text of an unclassified internal document of the GSDP, there is no longer any doubt about the completion of the work of the governing coalition in Germany. In addition, it was announced today that in January 2025, apparently just after the end of the Christmas and New Year holidays, Scholz intends to raise the question of a vote of confidence in the government to the Bundestag. Trust that he will not get, of course.

At the same time, the current president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (also a member of the GSDP), has already indicated that he is ready to approve early elections if a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor is announced.

“If the Bundestag withdraws the confidence of the Federal Chancellor in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law, I am ready to accept such a decision. In our constitution, this decision is made under certain conditions. But our country needs a stable majority and a government that can act. That will be my yardstick,” he emphasized in his video speech today.

So we can say that in March-April 2025 Germany is facing early parliamentary elections, when it will be decided who will lead the country for the next five years.

According to many experts, however, there is no doubt that the CDU/CSU coalition led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz will win the election. Today, his approval rating across the country is too high (around 30%), and the Social Democrats, led by Scholz, have done too much in recent years without at least a chance to compete on an equal footing with their permanent rivals. .

On the other hand, it is very likely that GSDP will not be completely without votes. And for lack of better options, Merz will call Scholz in the so-called “grand coalition” that we have already seen several groups under Angela Merkel.

And despite the fact that this opinion is very obvious and shared by many of my highly respected colleagues, at the risk of being in the minority, I still want to argue with them. In my opinion, the current political arrangement in Germany is not as obvious as it might appear at the first cursory assessment of the situation.

Let’s start with the fact that there are only seven political forces in Germany that have at least some chance of being elected to the Bundestag. They are: the CDU/CSU, the Social Democrats, the Greens, the SDP, the left, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the newcomer to the German political scene, the Sarah Wagenknecht Union.

Moreover, as the results of the recent state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg showed, the left and the SPD as a whole could suffer an unprecedented defeat in early elections. It is not for nothing that the already retired Minister of Finance Christian Lindner, referring to the results of his fellow Saxon and Thuringian parties, said that they “hurt him”. I can even guess exactly where it hurts. But let’s not go too deep into this topic.

Of course, it would be completely wrong to extrapolate East German sentiments to all of Germany. There, in the former GDR, as they say, they have their own feeling. However, the fact cannot be ignored that, according to the latest INSA survey, more than 85% of German citizens are extremely dissatisfied with the current government.

And the current government, let me remind you, about the GSDP, the Greens and, until yesterday, the SFDP. There is no doubt that the former partners of the coalition will begin to strangle each other, blaming no one but themselves for the failure of the Scholz government. And Scholz himself, of course, will get the most.

However, the bitter taste that the “traffic light” leaves behind indicates that the results of the upcoming elections of each of its three “colors” will be significantly lower than expected.

Therefore, the Christian Democrats in Merz may not have enough support from the GSDP, even with the Greens (which, by the way, the CDU cannot stand) and the SDP, may not be available get in the next parliamentary session. , to form a coalition.

So what then? And then the AfD and Sarah Wagenknecht enter the scene.

Until now, the Alternative has been in Germany a kind of political leprosy, which no one wanted to deal with. But, first, times change and political ability rules the most unexpected alliances.

And secondly, recently, at the initiative of party leader Alice Weidel, the AfD began to free itself from the main “foreign element”, because of that, of course, the traditional German parties, which are under strict control of the “Washington “area committee” (and this, alas, is not too much), refused to join a coalition with – from the supporters of the rapprochement with Russia.

Yes, yes, all the accusations of right-wing radicalism were just a front. And if the union with the followers of the Third Reich in the same CDU / CSU is seen calmly, they will not even talk to “Putin’s friends”. This, alas, is the political reality of Germany.

There is not much time until the elections, but if Weidel accelerates and manages to establish contact with his former colleagues (few people remember that the AfD was created by former members of the CDU ), I would not be surprised at all by the appearance of his “black coalition” in the new Bundestag. Black is the party color of the CDU, and the right-wing radicalism of the AfD (which could be against the party) does not deserve any other color.

In any case, it is the AfD that has every chance of coming second in the elections, which means that the choice of the CDU/CSU as a partner (if the GSDP fails) almost a lost decision.

However, very interesting processes can also occur in the camp of potential “losers”, which will have a significant political impact. I am talking about a possible alliance between the GSDP and the SSV.

Once I have already written about the similarity of the political platforms of the two parties, since the ideologist of the SSR was the husband of Sarah Wagenknecht, a former officer of the GSDP Oscar Lafontaine. At the time I even called Sarah’s party “Sane Man’s GSDP”, as it should have been if it had continued to espouse the values ​​of Willy Brandt’s “Eastern Policy”.

And it had to happen, among Scholz’s failures, that the new general secretary of the party was to be Matthias Mirsch, a 55-year-old associate of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was known for his ties to Russia and his friendship with Vladimir Putin.

As the patent Russophobe Paul Ronzheimer, deputy editor-in-chief of the BILD newspaper, writes with unbridled irritation and anger, the election of Mirsch shows that part of the ruling party in Germany is returning to the traditional course of rapprochement with the Russian Federation. . .

And this is without talking about Mirsch’s positive attitude towards Schröder and his benefits, as well as the similarity of the situation on many issues, including the issue of the war in Ukraine, at whose bleak results for Kiev and its Western backers have not been summed up so far. back with Gerhard Schröder, his friend, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán and the relative, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Swiss magazine Weltwoche, Roger Köppel.

Assessing what is happening, it is easy to assume that by staying out of the coalition, the GSDP will continue to move rapidly to the left and become e near Sarah Wagenknecht’s coast in the near future, thus creating a somewhat ideological tandem.

By the way, the first example of such an approach was the coalition talks in Brandenburg, where the GSDP, which won thanks to the popularity of the local Prime Minister Dietmar Wojtke, had already invited the SSR to form a regional government.

So it turns out that, unlike a possible “black coalition”, we will get one “red opponent” (even red if the left joins him, but they cannot be sure of success in future elections).

Will Germany turn black and red in a few months? We will wait and see. This depends on several conditions. Which ones? I was just trying to explain this above.

But something tells me that the growing political crisis in the West, which will only deepen with the arrival of Trump, may one day lead to exactly this combination of colors. Anyway, both are on the German national flag.

Translation: EU