German leftist rebels fight to sink Merkel power pact

BERLIN: Germany’s Angela Merkel hopes to form a new government by late March, half a year after inconclusive elections, but if there is one man who may yet torpedo the plan, it’s a 28year-old Young Socialist. Kevin Kuehnert has burst onto the German political scene as the passionate leader of a guerrilla campaign against another grand coalition or “GroKo” government which now spells the greatest threat to the veteran leader. The Berlin university student heads the youth wing of the Social Democrats (SPD), Germany’s second biggest party, which has reluctantly agreed to once again negotiate a role as junior partners to Merkel’s conservatives.

To Kuehnert and other like-minded youth wing members such a power pact would spell a betrayal of the over 150-yearold labor party’s cherished ideals that could consign it, after a string of election defeats, to the dustbin of history. While SPD leader Martin Schulz has made his peace with the idea of playing second fiddle to “Mutti” Merkel, Kuehnert and other nextgeneration politicians are doing their best to derail the plan. In his fiery speech at an SPD party congress last Sunday, Kuehnert said that repeated tie-ups with Merkel’s party over recent years were “an endless loop ... that we have to break”. He urged party comrades to bite the bullet, go into opposition and “be a dwarf today so we can be a giant again one day”.

With the mood in the party glum and fragile, the plan to negotiate another loveless left-right alliance was backed with a dangerously thin margin, by 56 percent of the 600 party delegates. Now Kuehnert’s rebel alliance hopes to bomb the GroKo plan at the end of coalition talks, expected several weeks from now, when the party’s 440,000 rank-and-file members get to have the final word in a vote. If the young activists, and other internal critics, succeed with their #NoGroKo campaign, this would likely spark snap elections in Europe’s biggest economy, and probably the end of the Merkel era. —AFP