Opinion: Making Germany governable again

World
Europe

You might think Angela Merkel won the recent German election. You are wrong…

Alternative für Deutschland won Germany’s 2017 election twice.

First, by garnering 13.5 percent of the national vote, making it the first fascist party to enter the Bundestag since 1945; Second, by preventing Angela Merkel from forming a government, having made immigration such a contentious topic that she could not secure a coalition agreement with the Free Democrats.

Angela Merkel talks with officials. /DPA Photo

Curiously, it wasn’t the FDP’s signature topic, nor their only point of disagreement. But it was an emblematic one, borrowed from the right-right. Fiscal conservatives, the party is more associated with promoting laissez-faire economic policies.

Even then, they have always indicated a preference for skilled immigrants over mass migration. But, as the so-called center-right of the center-right, during this year’s election campaigning, the FDP pivoted to the dark side, eager to capture political refugees from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union flocking to the extremist AfD.

If that meant leaving Germany without a government for a few months, so be it. Never mind the unprecedented instability it has created in Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful state. Ignore the fact that it hurts the EU’s Brexit negotiations.

The Free Democrats had just bounced back from 4 years without parliamentary representation. Taking Merkel down might bring it up another four points if the country has to conduct a snap election. This could place the FDP on a par with Alternative für Deutschland.

That, in a nutshell, is how tense Germany is today. Having lost 8 percent of her Christian Democratic Party’s (CDU) voters, largely to the AfD in the September election, though still the most popular politician in the country, Merkel’s competitors sense her end is nigh, and can’t get the scent blood out of their nostrils. So much so that two months of negotiations to form a coalition government only served to sharpen their ambitions to remove her once and for all from power.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Horst Seehofer, German Green Party leader Cem Ozdemir and Free Democratic Party (FDP) chairman Christian Lindner are pictured inside the German Parliamentary Society during exploratory talks about forming a new coalition government in Berlin, Germany, November 16, 2017. /Reuters Photo‍

Can you blame them? In office since 2005, Angel Merkel is the longest serving national leader in the European Union, and the Bundesrepublik’s second-longest serving head of state after Helmut Kohl. Leading two coalition governments with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the country’s first female chancellor has always been referred to as the Germany’s mother: "Mutti" or "mummy" as she is affectionately known, has always been able to govern from both sides of the aisle.

The reasons for her popularity over the years are the same as for her downfall. Merkel has always assimilated the political currents around her. Particularly those of the center-left and environmental communities, whom the former communist often borrowed ideas and initiatives from. To many on the right, this tendency betrayed the fact that she was a leftist in conservative clothing, triggering widespread resentment. Her admission of 1.5 million Muslim migrants helped confirm such suspicions.

Surely Merkel has her regrets about how conducted herself the last twelve years. Though she has sought to accommodate demands to scale back immigration to "manageable" levels, both from within her own party, and the CDU’s right-wing Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, Merkel has consistently portrayed herself in recent years as a champion of an open Germany. No adjustments she makes seem to change that perception, and rightly so.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel talks to the media at Christian Democratic Union (CDU) headquarters in Berlin, Germany, November 17, 2017. /Reuters Photo

The subtext is one of principle, more than numbers, and Germany’s obsession with its declining birthrate and lack of skilled laborers. Specifically, an idea of inclusiveness and tolerance that comes from living in a borderless European Union, in which freedom of movement is a social value, irrespective of who is doing the moving. That’s why Merkel has attracted such ire from conservatives, and why a far-right, of vintage Nazi affectations, came of age under her watch.

The next German government is going to be tasked with far more grandiose responsibilities than simply making the country’s trains run on time. It’s going to have to assume a certain degree of ideological leadership, which helps arrest the country’s drift rightwards, and averts the brinksmanship being played out in Berlin today. With the US and the UK lurching from crisis to crisis and tensions with Russia at an all-time high, this is no time for a technocratic government.

Germany must be governed in a manner consistent with its postwar obligations towards Europe, and its constitutional guarantee of asylum for refugees. Any deviation from that will represent an unfurling of the order forged out of the ruins of the Nazi era, not just a change in party guards. The consequences of such a transformation would be global, not just local. Germans need to remember that and elect their governments more responsibly.

(Joel Schalit is a Berlin-based news editor at Euractiv.com. The article reflects the author’s opinion, not necessarily the view of CGTN.)