I did not yet write about the outcome of the state elections in Hesse and Lower-Saxony which took place end of January because I found the results quite frustrating. Most shocking to me is the fact that a far left-wing party called “Die Linke” (= The Left) entered both Parliaments.
SPON about the origins of that party:
The party stems from the 2005 marriage of the PDS, a post-communist party popular in former East Germany, and WASG, a left-leaning group that splintered off from the Social Democrats (SPD) during the administration of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, partially in response to the welfare reforms his party introduced.
And the ideas spreading in this party are somewhat bizarre, to put things nicely: Christel Wegner, one of their representatives in the state parliament of Lower Saxony suggested that Stasi - the secret East German police - and the Berlin Wall weren’t such bad ideas after all.
“State Representative Wants the Stasi Back”, SPON, February 15, 2008:
Just a few weeks into her job, she said on television that the dreaded East German secret police — the Stasi — was useful to protect the state from “reactionary forces” and that the Berlin Wall was built to keep West Germans out of East Germany.
“I think that when one builds a new societal form,” she said in reference to the Stasi, “then one needs such an organ because one has to protect oneself from other forces, reactionary forces, that look for opportunities to weaken a state from the inside.” She went on to say that “the construction of the Wall was, in any case, a measure taken to prevent West Germans from continuing to come into East Germany.”
OK, Christel Wegner has now been expelled from the Left party’s parliamentary group in Lower Saxony – but she is still sitting in Parliament. That is bad enough.
At least, CDU (= conservative Christian Democrat) Premier Christian Wulff held on to power in Lower Saxony.
In Hesse, however, it is unclear whether CDU Governor Roland Koch will stay in power. He won by a razor-thin majority, but will not be able to form a coalition with FDP unless the Greens would agree to join this coalition. On the other hand, there is the Social Democrat candidate Andrea Ypsilanti - to become governor of the state of Hesse, she would have to rely on support from the Left Party. And she might be tempted to do so.
Even worse: According to polls heading into today`s city-state vote in Hamburg, the Left Party stands to clear the 5 percent hurdle into parliament there too.
More on that:
“Germany’s Social Democrats and their Far Left Migraine” by Charles Hawley in Berlin, SPON, February 22, 2008