The Frau’s Great Victory is due entirely to her own image and nothing else. The election campaign was squarely centred around her and her alone. A lot of silly comments in the international press about her remarkable achievement in that she is the only leader in Europe not to have been ousted during the crisis. In all other Eurozone elections so far all the incumbents have been ceremoniously ousted by a kick in the rear from their electorates.
But the Great Mutti not only held onto power but increased her share of the vote spectacularly! Well, yes… But why is this considered such a great achievement? If anything it was to be expected. All the other ousted leaders were following the policies She imposed on them. But then the citizens (or vassals) of the other Euro states do not vote in German Elections. On the other hand, The Frau not only has not imposed any debilitating stringent austerity programmess on her own electorate, but has designed a policy which benefits Germany alone. If only for the short term.
In other words the southern states are being forced into penury to keep the Euro going so that German exports remain competitive. Furthermore Germany has imposed a nice little earner in that all these bail out funds, though not bailing out any of the recipients, are generating billions in inflows to Germany from interest. While, at the same time causing the debt of the debt stricken states to balloon. So what was the object of the exercise? To benefit Germany! Alone, you dumbkopf!
Well, after the election results that is quite obvious. Merkel has very successfully imposed a policy of Heads I win Tails you lose on the rest of Europe. So for God’s sake stop expressing surprise on how well she did compared to other incumbents! There is no comparison.
Now the composition of the Bundestag. Well, since Germany does have a fair proportional representation electoral system, the seating result is interesting. In the triumph of her will The Frau is about 5 seats short of an overall majority. Since the ignoble Free Democrats were booted out (at least!) and since the Alternative for Germany party just didn’t get into the Bundestag for a few thousand votes it appears, the Bundestag is made up as follows: Merkel (and it IS Merkel and not the CDU judging by the winning campaign) is 5 seats short and the opposition parties are in the majority. The Opposition Parties are the SPD, the Greens and De Linke.
All three parties in opposition are supposedly from left leaning to left wing parties. In any other democracy, since they have a majority in votes and seats, they should be the ones to form a governing coalition. However this is not going to happen. Firstly because of all the hype over Merkel’s triumph, second, perhaps above all, because the SPD, Social Democratic party is just another of these misnomers like Tony Blair’s version of a “Labour” party, or Papandreou’s so called “socialist” or even Francois Hollande’s lukewarm version of “socialism.”
Nevertheless, the SPD does not seem too keen. NOT mind you because it objects to Merkel’s policies, since they did vote in every one of the Greek “bail out” packages with all the catastrophic conditions attached, but because last time around the Grand Coalition with Merkel cost them a large percentage of votes. This time around Merkel’s coalition partners were decimated, so simple cynical political survival politics warn against participating in such a coalition.
So what could happen? Well a coalition of the left, the only sensible and democratic solution is out, because the Germans do not want to rock the boat of The Frau’s triumph. Next, of course the Grand Coalition with the SPD, or even a small coalition with the Greens. It appears, however, that the Greens have ruled this out. And it is reported that the SPD is split over whether to go ahead with the coalition, for the above stated reasons.
So a good solution could be a minority CDU government (in any case the SPD just about always votes with Merkel on most things), or else there could be defections from the SPD or even a formal split of the SPD. The most likely outcome appears at this stage to be the Grand Coalition, because somehow the Germans, despite the way they actually voted, are polled as wanting this solution. Ingrained conservatism after all? Lack of imagination? A false sense of security?
It makes you wonder why Marx had always believed the Revolution would start in Germany!