What works for this small northern state makes German history
FROM his waterfront office, Daniel Guenther has a view of the passenger and cargo ships that leave Kiel bound for Norway, Sweden and east across the Baltic Sea to Lithuania and Russia.
Guenther’s political outlook is similarly expansive, after he pulled off a feat that has Berlin looking to his small northern state for clues to Germany’s future direction.
A member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, Guenther, 44, unexpectedly ousted the Social Democrats in state elections in Schleswig-Holstein in May. But it’s what he did next that is attracting most attention.
Unable to form a government alone, he forged a threeway hookup of his Christian Democrats with two traditionally incompatible parties, the business-friendly Free Democrats and the Greens.
It’s only Germany’s secondever such coalition, and while the state government doesn’t have to concern itself with thorny international issues such as policy for the euro area, Europe or the rest of the world, it’s a model with some important admirers.
“The chancellor checked in regularly during the coalition talks to see what we were doing up here,” Guenther, now the prime minister of SchleswigHolstein, said in an interview in Kiel, the state capital. “And when I was able to tell her that
The chancellor checked in regularly during the coalition talks to see what we were doing up here. And when I was able to tell her that the coalition was accomplished, she was pleased.
the coalition was accomplished, she was pleased.”
Schleswig-Holstein is a largely rural region that is home to fewer than three million people scattered between the medieval city of Luebeck – once capital of the Hanseatic League of merchants – via the island communities of North Friesland to Kiel, Flensburg and the border with Denmark.
Party politics there used to be viewed as provincial and backward – until the formation this summer of the “Jamaica” coalition, named after the colors of the three parties: Black, yellow and green.
Merkel has a particular interest in this coalition, since it offers a potential template for the next federal government after national elections on Sept 24. Polls currently all point to Merkel winning a fourth term, but with her options for governing limited to two possibilities: Another grand coalition of the two main parties,
Daniel Guenther, now the prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein
or a Kiel-style arrangement.
Manfred Guellner, head of the polling institute Forsa, predicts that the Social Democrats under Martin Schulz will refuse to serve as Merkel’s junior partner again if defeated, and “would probably rather go into opposition.” As a result, a “Jamaica” coalition is the most likely outcome of the federal election, Guellner said in an interview.
Build your own German coalition: Interactive guide
Unlike in the US, coalition governments are common in Germany. However, an alliance of Merkel’s CDU, the Free Democrats and Greens is a step too far for many party officials because they are so far apart ideologically. Whereas the FDP is economically liberal and free market, the Greens stand for an eco-friendly, interventionist approach to policy making. — WP-Bloomberg