23/10/2014
Roberto Inclán is a Germanist
The last elections to the regional parliament of Thuringia of September 14 are having more important consequences for German politics than expected at first. Despite the predictable victory of the candidate of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and current Minister-President of the region, Christine Lieberknecht, with 33. 5% of the vote – a 2. 2% increase on the 2009 elections – the strong emergence of the party Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 11 seats has led to the departure of the Liberal Party (FDP) from Parliament. The FDP has lost the 7 seats it had won on the last term, which has complicated the formation of the future regional government, to the point that it could imply the CDU moving to the opposition in the Thuringian Landtag for the first time.
For its part, the SPD (German Social Democratic Party) has suffered a major setback after losing 6 of the 18 seats won in 2009, representing a record low in this Land of East Germany. This seems to have been interpreted as a protest vote due to the Grand Coalition pact it has with the CDU in the State's government: Thuringia's SPD leadership met this week in Erfurt and decided to withdraw its support to its partner in the federal government and work for a coalition of the left with Die Linke party (The Left) and with Die Grünen party (The Greens).
Together, the three parties would have 46 of 91 possible seats, which would lead Bodo Ramelow to become the first politician of the Die Linke party in becoming a Minister-President of a German region.
A few days before the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – which marked the beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), to which Thuringia belonged – this would be the first major success of this political party formed in 2007 as a result of the union of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG). The latter was founded in 2005 by Oskar Lafontaine, who became chancellor candidate for the SPD in the 1990 election, party chairman between 1995 and 1999, and Finance Minister in the first term of Gerhard Schroder's government. A career that has earned him the enmity of his former party (SPD), and to be dismissed – sometimes as 'traitor' – from any government combination.
However, Bodo Ramelow still needs to have the approval of the SPD's bases to become Minister-President of Thuringia which, through the vote of the 4311 members in this region, have until 3 November to decide whether or not to trust this "red-red-green" alliance for government in the next five years.
Should this scenario be confirmed, it would still remain to be seen how this political shift to the left of the SPD would affect its relationship with the CDU in the Government in Berlin and how the more moderate Social Democratic Party voters in other regions would react. Michael Grosse-Brömer, CDU politician, has already criticised this new direction of its partner in Government and has said that he is confident that 'the foundations of the SPD will stop this mistake.' For her part, the Secretary-General of the SPD, Yasmin Fahimi, has already made some statements in which she claims that this fact should be only understood in a regional sense, since 'the situation at the federal level is completely different.'
The fact is that a bit more than a year after the Bundestag elections in September 2013, the distance between the CDU and the SPD is still more or less the same. In fact, the Social Democrats, despite having brought forward a number of proposals of its program, see how voting intention remains stagnant or is even declining.