Burst Tires in Race for Presidency
image by tiny_packages (license: CC-BY)
Three Candidates for Presidency
Three days after the retirement of our former president, the conservative coalition has chosen a candidate for presidency, ignoring the opposition’s recommendations to suggest a candidate that could be elected by all parties. The coalition instead proposed Christian Wulff, current minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia and member of the CDU.
As soon as government had decided to propose Wulff, two of the three oppositional parties (i.e. SPD and the Greens) suggested Joachim Gauck, not member of any party. Gauck fought the GDR and was responsible for the Stasi files after the defeat of the GDR. He has an attitude which can be roughly explained as “American freedom” meaning that he is very liberal. This also lead to criticism from social-democratic non-politicians and the left-wing party Die Linke.
Die Linke thus discussed if they should propose another candidate, trying to find an agreement within the party. The result according to media was that “the party chair has put through its opinion”: Die Linke proposed Luc Jochimsen as third candidate and they will also support her in a second or third voting. This shows the huge distrust against Gauck.
Voting According to Party Will
Now, representatives of all parties are told to vote for their own candidate and most of them will probably also follow the party line. Germany has a strong tradition of party politics and the so called “Fraktionsdiziplin” recommends each representative to vote according to the own faction’s leaders opinion. This makes oppositional ideas automatically evil. They might be the best ideas ever, the coalition will dismiss them anyway, just because you are supposed to vote as your own leaders do.
Since presidential elections are secret, you will however find more people who do not follow this rule. Furthermore, there are not only politicians in the Bundesversammlung who votes the president, but there might also be celebrities (Bundesrat can chose representatives as it wants).
Thus, the election could be exciting. It could… if everything had worked as expected.
Paltering Behind the Curtain
To get many votes from the political opponents, SPD and Greens—both usually caring very much about social security—have chosen a liberal politician as their candidate for presidency. They explained that they saw the need for a “non-party candidate”, but selecting Gauck as the one to be was rather calculation than persuasion. And it seemed to work. A few days after the presentation of Mr. Gauck as an alternative candidate several liberal politicians of the FDP said they want to support Gauck instead of the real CDU and FDP candidate Wulff who is rather conservative than liberal.
Yet, as the Die Linke will not support Gauck due to his lack of social dedication, the Red-Green strategy might not work that well. Besides, the German caricaturist Klaus Stuttmann published a picture about the FDP’s thoughts on the presidential election. Its content can be translated as: “Hello Angela [Merkel], no rising taxes! otherwise we not vote for Wulff. A good friend”.
This would mean that the opposition has shot themselves in the foot, because they wanted to impose higher taxes for the rich argumenting with Basic Law article 14:
(2) Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.
It seems like the FDP now uses its chance to vote for a candidate that would fit themselves, but not their more mighty coalition partner CDU to impose their own ideas against the majority will. You might wonder why this works, as the CDU could also refuse: Some observers say that as soon as the oppositional candidate is voted for new president, our chancellor Merkel will receive her political death blow and would have to retire.
New elections however—and maybe the FDP has not enough foresight here—would be another desaster for the liberal party, as their popularity is really low at the moment.
Sometimes, if you plan too much, you (as we use to say in Germany) “wake up in front of a pile of broken glass”.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
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