Coalition could end deadlock for Merkel
R I G H T WI N G Alliance with Greens would tip balance of power
BERLIN • Germany’s conservatives strengthened the hand of their leader, Angela Merkel, yesterday as she prepared for tough coalition talks aimed at breaking a crippling post-election political deadlock.
Members of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their sister party, the Christian Social Union ( CSU), voted by a 98.6% margin to reappoint her head of their parliamentary group, well above scores she had received in prior years.
“ This is proof of the trust in me,” she said.
However, the clock now begins ticking on Ms. Merkel, who was severely weakened by Sunday’s tight election and is still seen vulnerable to a rebellion from within conservative ranks.
The vote gave the conservatives a slight edge over Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD), but by a far smaller a margin than pollsters had predicted and not enough to make Mr. Schroeder concede defeat. The ensuing deadlock has weighed on markets and hurt prospects for economic reform.
To keep alive her hopes of becoming Germany’s first woman chancellor, Ms. Merkel has two options: She must either persuade the SPD to drop its demands that Mr. Schroeder continue to run Germany, or get the environmentalist Greens to join her conservatives in an alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats ( FDP), her preferred partners.
The new parliament must convene by Oct. 18 at the latest, by which time any would-be chancellor would hope to have a coalition in place.
In one positive sign for Ms. Merkel, a leading member of the SPD suggested for the first time yesterday his party could enter a “grand coalition” with Ms. Merkel’s conservatives without Mr. Schroeder.
“Under certain conditions, yes, but these conditions are not yet in place,” Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit told RBB radio.
The CDU will hold coalition talks with the SPD tomorrow, after speaking earlier in the day to the FDP, party officials said. The SPD and the Greens — partners in the outgoing coalition — will meet today.
Failure to secure the chancellery could prompt CDU barons to turn on Ms. Merkel, who has been blamed for an inept, gaffe-prone campaign, and spell an end to her as a political force.
“ A badly wounded Merkel has to go on the offensive in coalition talks,” the newspaper Sueddeutsche
said yesterday. “Until now the knives in her party have not come out for her.”
Only weeks ago, 51-year-old Ms. Merkel was being feted as the leader destined to awaken Germany from its economic stupor and set off a wave of European reform from Paris to Rome.
She had vowed a shake up of Germany’s labour market and tax system and an easing of firing rules to boost growth and cut unemployment, near post-war highs.
However, since her party failed to win an outright majority with the FDP and scored far lower than polls had predicted, her hold on power and ability to implement her program are in question.
Despite the fact his SPD came in three parliamentary seats short of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives in the election, Mr. Schroeder, 61, has vowed not to give up the chancellery without a fight.
The array of potential government groupings has provided pundits with a field day as they debate the various colourful combinations.
Mr. Schroeder’s party looks keen to woo the FDP to its side and create a “traffic-light” coalition with the Greens — named after the red-yellow-green colours of the party banners.
Many analysts still believe a “grand coalition” between the CDU and SPD is the most likely outcome, despite Mr. Schroeder’s refusal to play second billing to Ms. Merkel.
Under one scenario, both Mr. Schroeder and Ms. Merkel would step down and allow new leaders to arrange an alliance.
Another possibility is the “Israel model,” in which there would be a CDU and SPD government with a shared leadership: Mrs. Merkel might take the reins for the first two years, Mr. Schroeder the other two, as happened in 1984 with Labour’s Shimon Peres and Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir.
Another option is the “Glienicke Bridge” model, in which both parties sacrifice their leaders to break the impasse. The bridge, on the border between Berlin and Potsdam, was the setting for numerous Cold War spy exchanges.
SPD insiders said Mr. Schroeder might step down if Ms. Merkel agreed to relinquish her dream of becoming the country’s first woman chancellor.
Yesterday, a poll showed that more than two-thirds of Germans were also unhappy with the elections’ muddled outcome and voters were deeply divided about what coalition they would like to see.
According to the survey by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, an independent opinion research institute, only one in three respondents favoured the left-right grand coalition grouping the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats.
The tangle has already been dubbed the new Berlin Blockade, the first being the Soviet attempt to starve the city’s western half into submission in the late 1940s.