Mathew D. Rose – German State elections: a Tectonic Political Shift
Germany’s legacy political parties suffered a rout in one state election on Sunday and were soundly defeated in another.
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Germany’s authoritarian liberal political class is crumbling – rapidly. In Sunday’s elections in two states in the Eastern part of the nation (Saxony and Thuringia), there was a major political shift reminiscent to recent EU parliamentary elections, as well as those this summer in France and Britain. In both of Sunday’s elections the dominance of the West German legacy political parties – Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, the Greens, and Liberals – was ended for the first time since the German post-war political system was introduced.
Before delving into the numbers it is interesting to note that in both states the voter participation reached record highs in the period following reunification. In other words this election had nothing to do with apathy and a great deal with the reactivation of democracy that had been fading during the Merkel years as voters had accepted that there was no alternative and abandoned the democratic process.
Saxony is the seventh largest of the sixteen German federal states. Since the first state election in 1990 following reunification the Christian Democrats have dominated politics in Saxony, although since 2004 they have needed coalition partners. The current coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens marshalled a majority of six in a parliament of 120 members. That is now over. Together they did not even win half the seats. In fact, they all obtained a smaller percentage of the vote that in the previous election. As for the Liberals (FDP), they only received two percent of the vote, not even close to the five percent necessary to enter parliament. Victors were the fascist AfD and a new party focussed on old social democratic policies led by Sarah Wagenknecht called the BSW.
The AfD was just one percent behind the Christian Democrats who fell to 31.9 percent and their worst result in Saxony ever. The BSW obtained with round twelve percent almost as many votes as the three parties in the current coalition of the national government, the so-called traffic-signal coalition (Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals). In fact the Greens, who have lost their traditional youth vote with their blood lust policies in Ukraine and occupied Palestine, just managed to reach the five percent vote prerequisite to enter Saxony’s parliament, otherwise the disaster would have been complete. Surprisingly the Left Party also managed to re-enter parliament. If the legacy parties wish to remain in government they will have to do some hard bargaining, which means with the BSW, as they have pledged not to join a coalition with the Left Party of the AfD. The BSW however is the only German party demanding negotiations in Ukraine and occupied Palestine (the AfD is against the Ukraine war), something that is anathema to the legacy parties. The question is however: does the BSW see its political role in stabilising the authoritarian liberal status quo? This is certainly not what the voters mandated them with.
In the much smaller state of Thuringia the fascist AfD won almost as many votes as all four West German legacy parties together and more parliamentary seats, as both the Greens and Liberals did not reach the five percent hurdle. This time the BSW with well over 15 percent of the vote dwarfed the number of votes cast for the traffic-signal parties. Altogether the West German legacy parties won 34 percent of the votes, the AfD, BSW, and Left Party over sixty percent.
The Christian Democrats lost ground in Saxony and only made minor gains in Thuringia. Seeing that they are the main opposition party at the national level, where the traffic-signal coalition is highly unpopular, one would have expected them to profit from this. They didn’t. Interesting is that one polling agency is claiming most of the voters for the Christian Democrats do not support the party or its programme, but voted for the party to prevent the AfD from winning the election. An important point, if true.
Today was without a doubt a fiasco for the West German legacy parties, but really does not come as a surprise. With their neo-liberal policies, which are driving the less well off to the wall as well as pushing the German economy into recession, they have alienated much of the German population. If you take the election results and add the non-voters, these legacy parties can currently only mobilise support among a third ot the nation’s citizens. In Thuringia it was barely twenty percent.
With no policies that will serve large parts of the German citizenry, the West German legacy parties have turned to polemical defamation. Anyone against them is either a populist, a fascist, an anti-Semite, a Putin stooge or similar. This has lost its efficacy over time. Their warmongering, especially by the Greens, in Ukraine and occupied Palestine is not supported by most of the German population, , especially in the Eastern part, and then mainly among the metropolitan elite in the West.
Following today’s fiasco these legacy parties are claiming that they have to listen to the voters. That is rather difficult if your only form of communication with the people is giving commands, which in effect are the same commands you are receiving from corporate interests. It is no wonder that what we saw at Sunday’s election is spilling over to the Western states of Germany, or that a political party like the BSW that was established just a few months ago has won third place in both of today’s elections. On 22 September there will be a further election in an East German state: Brandenburg. Although a large number of its citizens have moved from West Berlin, altering its social and political basis, the results may well be similar to today’s two elections ,in which case it will be difficult to stop the decline of the West German legacy parties.
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