The Hindu : Drama, tension mark election result

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 24, 2002

International

International

Drama, tension mark election result

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS sept. 23. The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has earned a second term managing to cling to power in the closest election in the nation's history since the Second World War.

Latest results indicate that Germany's ruling Social Democrat-Green coalition has won the narrowest of parliamentary majority of just two or three seats compared to its previous majority of 16 seats. Sunday was a day of unprecedented drama and high tension. In the final weeks of desperate campaigning, the ruling Social Democrats, the Greens and the Opposition centre-right Christian Democrats and their Free Democrat allies highlighted the deep-seated national divisions in the German society. However, the real victor of Sunday election is the environmentalist party of the Greens, led by the Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, who in the final analysis has swung the result in favour of the ruling coalition. Mr. Fischer emerges as Germany's most popular politician but the Green Party has been criticised for turning its back on its environmentalist roots for political expediency.

Germany's European allies breathed a sigh of relief as the result has for the first time in recent months reversed the trend of centre-right politics, often based on a xenophobic agenda of entry and treatment of foreign workers mainly coming from the less prosperous regions of eastern, central region, West Asia and North Africa.

The Christian Democrat leader, Edmund Stoiber's impressive electoral performance has resulted in the party emerging as the largest single political group in Parliament. In that respect, Germany has now followed other European Union states, with the exception of Sweden, in leaning towards centre-right politics. The centre-right Mr. Stoiber was the preferred choice of the French President, Jacques Chirac, who was anxious to breathe some new life into the traditional German-French axis.

On the pessimistic side, the very narrow result would suggest that Mr. Schroeder's government could be heading for a mid-term collapse. Moreover, the perception is that close results with a paper-thin majority would obviously limit the scope for Mr. Schroeder's coalition government to embark on the desperately needed economic and administrative reforms in the recession and high unemployment prone economy.

Mr. Stoiber's controversial and divisive remarks on immigration and the role of foreign workers in Germany have not been acceptable for a vast majority of Germans. In the final analysis, Mr. Schroeder's bold and defiance of the Bush administration's policy over Iraq coupled with his initiatives on meeting the environmental and human challenges posed by last month's flooding in eastern Germany had stood him in good stead.

At the same time, most E.U. governments hope that Mr. Schroeder's anti-war hard-line on Iraq may not do a lasting damage to the relations with the U.S.

Hence, according to observers, Mr. Schroeder is expected to tone down — but not fundamentally change — his stance on Iraq and otheer major foreign issues, as a means of repairing relations with the Bush administration.

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