[A-List] Germany: election update

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Here's the pro-EU Independent, where Peter Mandelson has some influence
as a member of its "international advisory board" and is an old friend
and colleague of political journalist David Aaronovitch, waving the
flags for a Schröder victory on Sunday.


Analysis: Floods and war put German elections on a knife-edge
East Germany's ex-Communists may hold the balance as both the main
parties and their coalition partners stand neck and neck
By Mary Dejevsky in Berlin
The Independent, 20 September 2002

Six weeks ago, the grande dame of German opinion pollsters said that the
election was effectively over, and Edmund Stoiber's centre-right
alliance had won. Mr Stoiber, the leader of the Christian Socialist
Union and premier of Bavaria, had been running as much as 9 points ahead
in the polls since the start of the year, the central issue was
Germany's failing economy, and her judgment was that Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder was already out of the race.

Since then, Ms Elisabeth Nölle-Neumann of Allensbach - the only one of
the country's five major pollsters to have predicted Mr Schröder's
defeat of Helmut Kohl four years ago - has had to eat her words, not
once, but twice, and may have to do so a third time after the polls
close on Sunday night. Far from being either a foregone conclusion or
one of the most boring in Europe since last year's general election in
Britain, this year's German election has become one of the
closest-fought ever.

Not only are the two main parties - Mr Schröder's Social Democrats
(SDP) and Mr Stoiber's centre-right CSU/CDU alliance - neck and neck,
but so are the two parties that would form their natural coalition
partners: the Greens and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP). This
leaves the fifth party - the restyled East German communist party, which
now calls itself the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), perhaps
holding the balance.

That the next Chancellor of Germany may technically owe his victory to
the former East German communists is not something that will be welcomed
by either of the likely winners. But the closeness of the election
reflects a succession of quite exceptional - unforeseen and
unforeseeable - circumstances.

Who could have predicted, for instance, that torrential rain in central
Europe would cause the former East Germany's main river system to flood
so disastrously in mid-August? Who could have foreseen that President
Bush's crusade against Iraq would reach its climax in early September
and cause such ructions in Europe? And not even Mr Bush at his most
Machiavellian could have guessed that Baghdad would appear finally to
capitulate just the weekend before the German election.

Each of these totally extraneous events had an immediate impact on the
German election; each changed the mood of the voters and diverted
attention from the prevailing national gloom on the economy. The flood
disaster gave Gerhard Schröder the chance to show himself a competent
and hands-on national leader - which he did with great success,
neutralising much of Mr Stoiber's efforts to campaign as the better
economic manager. The themes of social and east-west solidarity helped
the SDP, and the flooding - perceived as evidence of global warming -
also helped the Greens.

Mr Bush's war rhetoric against Iraq gave Mr Schröder another
opportunity to make political capital. His sharply anti-war stance,
which was interpreted (not altogether correctly) by some as
anti-Americanism, pleased the left of his party. It pleased the SDP's
potential coalition partners, the Greens, who had other disputes with
the Americans, and it may also have drawn some former East Germans who
might otherwise have voted for the PDS.

It left Mr Stoiber with the choice of whether to endorse the US position
- thereby exposing himself to the "poodle" charges so familiar to Tony
Blair - or to find a middle way. Eventually, he settled on a call for UN
involvement, but beside Mr Schröder's categorical undertaking not to
take Germany into a war, he looked vague and indecisive.

Or at least he did until Saddam Hussein's letter to the UN accepting
arms inspections. Suddenly, Mr Stoiber was able to look wise and
statesmanlike, while accusing Mr Schröder of recklessly whipping up
war fever and isolating Germany from Europe and the international
community for personal electoral gain. After giving the Chancellor a
small lead last weekend, the polls have since tightened again,
suggesting that the advantages of the floods and Iraq to Mr Schröder
might be waning.

Now, two days before the election, the gap between the two main parties
and the two likely coalition partners in all five major polls is well
within the margin of error. In other words, they are so close as to be
level.

Through the summer and early autumn, the only predictable element in the
campaign has been Gerhard Schröder's spirit for the fight, though even
that was in doubt early in the campaign. Among the imponderable
questions now are whether the "gift" Mr Stoiber received from Baghdad
came too late to shift undecided voters in his favour, and whether -
when people confront their ballot papers on Sunday - their first
thoughts turn to floods and Iraq or to the euro in their pocket and
their job prospects.

A subjective impression from visits to quite disparate regions and
constituencies is that in key regions, such as North-Rhine Westphalia
and the former East Germany, the issue of the economy and jobs is
reasserting itself as the chief electoral priority. Germany's last place
in Europe for employment and economic growth has dented national pride.

Immigration remains an emotive issue, which has been neatly hooked into
the "fight against terrorism" by Mr Stoiber. The campaign has seen more
extreme-right marches and incidents than have been reported in the
national German or international press. Without a legal far-right party
in Germany, however, some of these votes will not be cast. Others will
go to the FDP, and others to Mr Stoiber, whose alliance has, quite
quietly but effectively, revived the immigration issue in the past week.

Against this, there is widespread scepticism that Mr Stoiber, or indeed
anyone, has the remedy, whether for immigration or for the economy. And
while all politicians are mistrusted, Mr Schröder is by the far the
better liked of the two main candidates, and wins hands-down when people
are asked who would make the better Chancellor. With Germany
increasingly following the international trend towards "personality"
elections. this gives him a decided advantage. Unfairly, perhaps, for
someone described as "more Prussian than a Prussian", Mr Stoiber is
handicapped in northern Germany by being Bavarian.

The paradox at the heart of this election is that while outside factors
have had an exceptional and possibly decisive impact, the campaign has
been conspicuously Germany-centred and fought with scarcely a glance
abroad - even though the result stands to reverberate well beyond
Germany's borders.

Rightly or wrongly, it will be seen as showing whether the advance of
the right in Europe has been halted, as the Swedish election last week
suggested. It will determine whether the Franco-German axis has a chance
of returning to dominance in the Europe Union (as a Stoiber victory
might suggest), or the current, more eclectic formation of ad hoc
alliances favoured by Mr Blair, continues. Above all, it will determine
how Germany is viewed: in feel alone, Schröder-land or Stoiber-land
could be very different places.

-----

Leading article: Mr Schröder has failed to reform Germany but still
deserves to be re-elected
The Independent, 20 September 2002

The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has been a disappointment in
his first term. He was elected four years ago on a Blairish promise to
manage the changes needed to modernise the German economy, but he was
never clear about what those changes were and who the losers would be.

As a result, the losers over the past four years have been Germany's
four million unemployed, shamefully neglected by a government
proclaiming social justice. What was needed was the blend of liberal
economics with a social conscience, a formula Mr Schröder claimed to
share with Tony Blair.

What Germany got, however, was a policy of no change, of sitting pat on
the corporatist, inflexible consensus. That has seen a further slide in
the country's relative economic performance. A quarter-century ago, the
German model was held up as everything the British one was not and
should be. Now, in the inevitable cycle of success, complacency, decline
and renewal, the powerhouse of the European economy has become flabby
while the British model seems the more dynamic, and the more plausible
model for a successful European Union.

Even the historic achievement of Mr Schröder's predecessor, Helmut
Kohl, of integrating East Germany into the western economy without undue
social tension has been allowed to stagnate. The sense of insecurity in
the east is in marked contrast to the recent economic progress made by
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - largely through the pursuit of
free-market policies.

Yet Mr Schröder, a skilled campaigner, has managed to pull back to
level pegging in the opinion polls with two days to go. He responded
quickly to last month's floods, and struck a popular pose on Iraq
against US war-mongering. But his greatest asset has been the failure of
his Christian Democrat opponent, Edmund Stoiber, to propose an
alternative policy on the economy. Mr Stoiber has spoken of the "shame"
of the government's record on unemployment, yet has no programme of
labour market reforms designed to end it.

Worse, Mr Stoiber has stooped to some deplorable language on
immigration. Last week he spoke of people's fears of the consequences of
expanding the EU to the east: "Four hundred million people are
threatening to come our way. We must prepare ourselves." He has also
deployed some disreputable innuendo linking immigration with both
unemployment and terrorism.

Mr Schröder, by contrast, and to his credit, has resisted the
temptation to pander to the anxieties stoked by the extreme right. Tony
Blair and his Home Secretary David Blunkett, who this week said
asylum-seekers from Kosovo and Afghanistan should "get back home", could
learn some lessons from him in this respect.

It is also worth noting that the Greens have matured as Mr Schröder's
coalition partners. In one respect Germany continues to be ahead of this
country, and that is in moving a modern industrialised economy towards a
sustainable future.

We therefore come to the reluctant conclusion that Mr Schröder would
be a better Chancellor than Mr Stoiber. We only hope that, if
re-elected, he will be a better Chancellor than he was in his first
term. Mr Blair should not have intervened in another country's general
election campaign by defending Mr Schröder to the left-leaning Berlin
newspaper Tagesspiegel. However, the continuation of the red-green
coalition is in the better interest of Germany and Europe as a whole.