Germany’s embattled leader, Gerhard Schröder, this week offered concessions to left-wing rebels within his own party ahead of a crunch vote on Friday October 17 that could lead to his resignation and the collapse of his government.
The German chancellor earlier this week held an emergency three-hour meeting with members of his Social Democratic Party (SPD) in an attempt to head off a revolt over his contentious plans to overhaul Germany’s welfare state.
Six rebel SPD MPs have threatened to vote against the government.
Schröder’s SPD and Green coalition has a working majority of just four in Germany’s Bundestag, or lower house.
Most observers expect the government to scrape through, but with the result nail-bitingly close, Schröder’s political future and that of his centre-left government was this week hanging in the balance.
”It’s going to be a challenge. Even if he wins this vote he might lose the next. It’s like Russian roulette,” said Peter Lösche, professor of political science at Göttingen University.
”The likely outcome is that Schröder will win. But I wouldn’t bet my house on it,” one Western diplomat added.
The chancellor has repeatedly threatened to resign if his programme of structural reforms, known as Agenda 2010, is not passed.
Earlier this month he told MPs: ”My political destiny is tied up with the passage of these reforms.”
Since narrowly winning re-election last September, after criticising the United States’s plans to invade Iraq, Schröder has become increasingly unpopular in Germany. This is not only true among ordinary Germans but also with disgruntled left-wingers inside his own party.
On Monday SPD officials announced three minor changes to the reforms in an attempt to win over the rebels. Schröder, meanwhile, expressed confidence that the Bundestag would back his programme.
”Our country needs successful reforms and it needs them now. I expect the coalition will give them its full united support,” he said.
The rebels are unhappy about a clause in the new Bill that would force the long-term unemployed to accept any job offered to them or risk losing benefits.
Olaf Scholz, the SPD’s general secretary, promised better pension provision for the unemployed, and said that some tough measures — including a clause that meant families would have to bail out their jobless relatives — had been dumped.
However, several rebels still appeared to be unconvinced. ”We are waiting to see what changes will be proposed,” said SPD MP Klaus Barthel. ”Only then will we decide how to vote.”
Both the right and left in Germany are agreed that something has to be done to dig the country out of its present hole.
The German economy — Europe’s largest — has been teetering on the brink of recession for the past three years. Unemployment now stands at 4,2-million — more than 10%. The public sector, meanwhile, is completely broke. And Berlin — Germany’s capital since 1999 — is officially bankrupt.
Some of the blame for Germany’s current economic woes can undoubtedly be blamed on the vast costs of German reunification. But the biggest problems appear to be more deep-rooted. Germany is suffering because of its too-generous welfare system, its over-regulated job market, and its powerful unions, many believe.
Several observers have pointed out that the Germany of 2003 uncannily resembles Britain, shortly before the arrival of Margaret Thatcher.
”We are where Britain was in the late 1970s. We even have our miners in the shape of IG Metall [Germany’s biggest industrial union],” Michael Stürmer, an adviser to the former German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, said. ”This country has been living beyond its means. People have become spoilt. We have been rich enough to afford this nonsense for a long time. But now it’s got ridiculous.”
During a visit to Britain this year Wolfgang Clement, Germany’s adroit Finance Minister, complained that Germans had developed a ”leisure mentality” and had become lazy.
German workers work a 35-hour week, have 30-plus days’ holiday, 16 days off for public holidays and retire at 60 even though the official retirement age was 65. Germans needed to work longer and harder, he said.
But not everyone agrees. Schröder, whose surprise victory over the opposition right-wing Christian Democrats (CDU) last year was almost entirely because of his opposition to the Iraq war, has seen his popularity evaporate, and has struggled to win public support for Agenda 2010.
Voters are happy about the prospect of tax cuts next year when the income tax is to be cut by â,¬15,6-billion. But they are deeply suspicious of the Social Democrat-Green coalition’s plans to freeze pensions and cut unemployment benefit.
On Monday about 5 000 pensioners protested in Berlin, walking from the Brandenburg Gate, the city’s most famous symbol, to the city hall. They carried banners that read: ”Pensioners and unemployed against the greed of banks and companies.” The march, organised by the Grey Panthers, is likely to be the first of many.
Meanwhile, several left-wing intellectuals who supported Schröder last year in his acrimonious stand-off with the Bush administration, say they are now disillusioned with the chancellor and his proposed structural reforms.
”These aren’t reforms. They are cuts,” Klaus Staeck, a German artist, complained. It was a right-wing myth to claim that German workers were inefficient, he said.
”I don’t think these reforms are the solution to our problems,” he added.
Either way, most observers believe that the rebels within the SPD will back down because the alternative would probably be a long spell in opposition.
The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, broadly supports the reform agenda and has come up with its own proposals, but they will vote against the government on Friday in order to maximise Schröder’s political embarrassment.
The opposition controls Germany’s Bundesrat, or upper house. The Bundesrat is likely to reject the Bill, which will then go to arbitration, before another vote, probably in mid-December.
If, on the other hand, Schröder loses on Friday and is forced to resign, the SPD could continue in government as part of a grand coalition with the CDU, some political pundits believe. Under this scenario Clement, would become chancellor, with the CDU’s deputy parliamentary leader, Friedrich Merz, a possible deputy.
Last month the SPD suffered a crushing defeat in elections in Bavaria, its worst in the state since World War II.
Last weekend an opinion poll in Der Spiegel magazine put the SPD on a mere 26%. Were a general election to be called tomorrow few doubt that the CDU’s leader, Angela Merkel, or Edmund Stoiber, whom Schröder narrowly defeated last time round, would romp home.
Last week the man who consistently emerges in polls as Germany’s most popular politician, the Green Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, was asked whether the government was in danger. He replied that it wasn’t.
Germany’s next election is not due until 2006. But some feel that the German chancellor should not be underestimated, despite his current difficulties.
”I don’t think he is a weak chancellor. He is a power player,” Lösche, the professor of political science, said. ”The government is in for a rough time. But it won’t collapse.” — Â