|
What's red and green and in trouble?
BERLIN Germany's Greens, once a protest party of Marxists, Maoists and Trotskyites that first tasted power 20 years ago by joining a Social Democratic government in the state of Hessen, are gearing up for another fight. This time, the stakes are much higher. "The big question is whether the red-green experiment is over," said Ralf Fuecks, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is affiliated with the Greens.Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who stunned Germany's political parties Sunday after his Social Democrats lost in North Rhine-Westphalia by announcing that he would hold early elections in September, said his party would again form a government with the Greens, his coalition partners since 1998. But the Greens, which in the late 1990s seemed invincible and even set to become a permanent political fixture on the regional and federal political scene, are in a mess. And to make matters worse, the Social Democrats are divided over running any election campaign on a red-green ticket. So are the Greens. Each feels damaged by each other's policies. One of the Green leaders, Reinhard BÃŒtikofer, said Tuesday: "Of course, the Greens want another red-green coalition. But we will not run a red-green campaign. We will run a Green campaign." The tide, however, is not in the Greens' favor, judging from a string of election defeats it suffered after joining Schröder's first government in 1998. Since then, like a house of cards tumbling down one by one, the red-green coalitions fell. The first to fall was in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in 1998, then in Hessen a year later, followed in 2001 by Hamburg. There was worse to come. The red-green coalition was thrown out in February from Schleswig-Holstein and on Sunday in North Rhine-Westphalia, both states once considered Social Democratic and Green bastions. "The federal government is the last of the red-green coalitions," said Fuecks, who warned that the only chance for the Greens during the coming election campaign was to clearly define what they stood for.
Ever since joining the Schröder government, the Greens have repeatedly made compromises or remained silent over issues that represented their core constituency. They failed to criticize the human rights record of President Vladimir Putin of Russia because Schröder had developed a close relationship with him and had won several large contracts for German companies. And they failed to block tough new immigration laws drawn up by the Social Democrat interior minister, Otto Schily. The Greens managed, however, to secure new rights for gay couples, including approval of a partnership that falls just short of marriage. They belatedly started to speak out against Schröder's decision to back European Union plans to lift the arms embargo that had been imposed on China when it became clear the party was losing support. The Greens had another falling-out with Schröder when they said that they would not back a new missile defense system that was intended to provide better protection for German troops involved in peacekeeping missions. The Social Democrats were furious and publicly criticized the Greens in a way that exposed serious tensions in the coalition. After enormous pressure, the Greens caved in, yet, paradoxically, it was a Greens member of the government, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who led a fundamental shift in Green ideology by agreeing in the late 1990s to send troops abroad. The Greens also want social and economic changes to go much farther while the left-wing of the Social Democrats want to slow down the reforms because of rising unemployment that has eroded support for the Schröder government. Indeed, younger and more leftist Social Democratic legislators, such as Andrea Nahles, have often blamed the Greens for the growing unpopularity of her party because the Greens want further reforms. There are other differences but the biggest is one of outlook. "The Greens," said Fuecks, "whose voters are professionals and academics, are still the party for minority rights, environmental and ecological issues for sustainable development. They jar with real existential issues such as having a job. The Greens stance has confused their voters. They will have to spell out clearly what they stand for in the coming weeks if they are to survive and if the red-green experience is to survive." The Greens are banking on Fischer, the student protester and first-ever Greens minister, to rescue them. Even though he has withdrawn from the day to day running of the party, until recently he was still Germany's most popular politician. That was until he became embroiled in a visa controversy in which lax controls by German embassies in Ukraine and other countries led to hundreds of thousands of people entering Germany under dubious circumstances. The Fischer case was eventually examined by a special parliamentary committee, with the hearings broadcast live on television. "Fischer ist Geschichte" (Fischer is History), Tageszeitung, Germany's satirical and investigative newspaper, rumbled Tuesday. But Fuecks said it was too early to write him off. "Fischer is a crisis management man. He is best when he is put out on front, when there is a crisis facing the Greens, like now." Schröder, trying to keep his Social Democratic Party united before campaigning starts for the September federal elections, took a blow Tuesday when his arch rival and former finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, said he would leave the Social Democratic Party and even try to run for an alternative leftist party. A leftist Social Democrat who has never supported Schröder's changes or attempts to modernize the German economy, Lafontaine could mobilize disillusioned voters and erode support for Schröder. Lafontaine said he would run against the Social Democrats if the Democratic Socialists, made up of former East German Communist Party members, combined forces with a leftist splinter party called Wahl Alternative, founded by former Social Democrats and trade unionists. So far, no Social Democrats in Parliament, some of whom oppose Schröder's changes, have said they would join Lafontaine. Posted by: Steve White 2005-05-28 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=120227 |