Jobs, reform dominate Germany’s election campaign

BERLIN: German voters go to the polls in crucial elections on Sunday dominated by concerns over jobs, growth and prospects for economic reform in Europe’s most populous state and biggest economy.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and conservative challenger Angela Merkel are fighting for every vote in what analysts describe as the most important – and most fiercely fought - German polls in nearly forty years.

At stake is Germany’s economic future - but also the well-being of the rest of Europe which has long suffered the fallout from the faltering performance of the bloc’s once-leading economic locomotive.

Mr Schroeder and Ms Merkel - who could make history by becoming the first woman chancellor in Germany - are running neck and neck in opinion polls. But with up to 25 per cent of voters still undecided, analysts remain wary about making any firm predictions about who will be in charge in Berlin over the next five years.

While Ms Merkel is widely expected to win the most votes, her Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) has seen its commanding lead melt away during past months.

The conservatives under Ms Merkel are projected to win between 41 per cent and 43 per cent of the votes and her Free Democratic (FDP) ally is at seven per cent to eight per cent. If these results are confirmed, Ms Merkel and her possible coalition partners will capture 51 per cent of the votes.

In contrast, Mr Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) are now expected to secure 32 per cent to 34 per cent of the votes. With the Chancellor’s Greens coalition partner at six per cent to seven per cent, the combined result for the ruling SPD-Greens alliance would put them at just 41 per cent.

However, a surprising 25 per cent of voters say they are still undecided and forecasters say the new Left party formed by former east German communists and a west German protest group, could win up to eight per cent of votes.

Mr Schroeder, however, has vowed not to set up any coalition with the Left Party, whose leaders include the quixotic former German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine.

If Angela Merkel falls short of a parliamentary majority on Sunday - as most polls still predict - there are two possible scenarios. First, the conservative leader could form a so-called ‘grand coalition’ with Mr Schroeder’s SPD as junior partner.

Although both politicians reject such a government, it is the one constellation which has a solid majority in every opinion poll.

A second possibility, reportedly being considered by Mr Schroeder as a means to cling to power, would involve adding the opposition FDP to his current coalition with the Greens. Specialists refer to this as a ‘stoplight coalition’ - so nicknamed because the parties have red (SDP), yellow (FDP) and green (Greens) as their trademark colours.

Significantly, the election is being fought almost entirely over tax and financial reforms aimed at boosting the economy and trimming a burgeoning budgetary deficit. Even Mr Schroeder’s critics recognize that he has tried valiantly over the last seven years to modernize the creaking German economy and undertake painful labour and market reforms.

After years of stagnation, the reforms seem to be paying off, with the economy picking up and consumer demand on the rise. Mr Schroeder insists he wants another term to continue reforms and has highlighted his opposition to the Iraq invasion, which Ms Merkel supported.

However, many Germans are clamouring for change - something that only Ms Merkel can really deliver.

Ms Merkel has spent the campaign hammering Mr Schroeder over Germany’s almost five million jobless and sickly growth in Europe’s biggest economy.

Mr Schroeder in response has said Angela Merkel’s tax reforms will benefit the rich and hit the disadvantaged. The two parties have accused each other of keeping secret post-election plans to cut social services and reduce tax allowances.

TURKISH QUESTION: Relations with Turkey and the role of Germany’s sizable Turkish minority are also a source of major differences between the two camps.

Mr Schroeder’s Social Democrats are confident they will have the support of the vast majority of the 600,000 people of Turkish origin entitled to vote in German elections. This in turn has fuelled fears among Ms Merkel’s aides that the Turkish vote - which makes up almost one per cent of the 62 million-strong electorate - could hand the closely-fought elections to Mr Schroeder’s SPD-Greens coalition.

The importance of the Turkish vote was demonstrated by Mr Schroeder’s visit to the headquarters of Hurriyet last week ostensibly to mark the 40th anniversary of the Turkish newspaper’s presence in Germany.

In addition, German politicians have staked out clear positions on an issue close to Turkish hearts: membership of the European Union.

Mr Schroeder and Greens Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer have repeatedly made clear that they want Turkey in the EU, despite the deep mistrust in Germany over the Turkish accession process.

Ms Merkel insists there is no place for the Muslim country, offering instead a ‘privileged partnership’ with the EU.

There are currently just two members of the Bundestag of Turkish origin, even though at 2.5 million among a population of 82 million, the Turks are a highly visible minority.

Katrina exposes Bush myth

WASHINGTON: Bush’s America is gone with the wind. It lasted just short of four years, from 9/11 to 8/29. The devastation of New Orleans was the watery equivalent of a dirty bomb — but Hurricane Katrina approached with advance warnings, scientific anticipation and, before it struck, a personal briefing of the president by the director of the National Hurricane Centre, who warned of breached levees. No terrorist attack could be as completely foreseen as was Katrina.

Bush’s presidency and re-election campaign was organized around one master idea: he stood as the protector and saviour of the American people under siege. On this he built his persona as a man of conviction and action. In the 2004 election a critical mass believed that, because of his unabashed patriotism and unembarrassed religiosity, he would do more to protect the country.

The deepest wound is not that he was incapable of defending the country but that he has shown he lacked the will to do so. In Bush’s own evangelical language, he revealed his heart. The press disclosed a petulant, vacillating president they had not noticed before. Time magazine described a ‘rigid and top-down’ White House where aides are petrified to deliver bad news to a ‘yelling’ president. Newsweek reported that, two days after the hurricane, top aides, who ‘cringe’ before Bush, met to decide which of them would be assigned the miserable task of telling him he would have to cut short his vacation.

With each of his three trips to survey the toxic floodwaters of New Orleans, Bush drifted farther out to sea. On his most recent voyage, on Monday, asked about his earlier statement, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees”, he said: “When that storm came through at first, people said, ‘Whew!’ There was a sense of relaxation.” In fact, the levees began to be breached before the eye of the storm hit the city. Queried about the sudden resignation that day of his Federal Emergency Management Agency director, Michael ‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’ Brown, Bush told the press, “Maybe you know something I don’t know”. On Tuesday, he tried a novel tactic to deflect ‘the blame game’, as he called it. “To the extent that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right,” he declared, “I take responsibility.” ‘Extent’ was the loophole allowing his magnanimity to be bestowed on the distant abstraction of government.

It was easier for Bush to renounce alcohol at 40 than ideology at 60. Bush had radicalized Reagan’s conservatism, but never has Reagan’s credo rung so hollow: “Government is not the solution to our problem.” Social Darwinism cannot protect the homeland. Many thousands, mostly poor black people, were trapped in the convention centre without food and water for days. Poverty has increased more than nine per cent since Bush assumed office. The disparity between the superpower’s evangelical mission to democratize the world and indifference at home is a foreign policy crisis of new dimension. Can Iraq be saved if Louisiana is lost? Bush’s credibility gap is a geopolitical problem without a geopolitical solution. Assuming a new mission, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, wears her racial identity to witness for Bush’s purity of heart.

So long as Bush could wrap himself in 9/11 his image was shielded. But once another event of magnitude thundered over his central claim as national defender, the Bush myth crumbled. Now his evocation of 9/11 only reminds the public of his failed promise. The hurricane has tossed and turned the country but will not deposit it on firm ground for at least the three and a half years remaining of the ruined Bush presidency. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service