Crisis Shifts German Politics, Maybe for Good

Source: all-breaking-news.com

Economists have played down the effects that the earthquake and nuclear emergency in Japan will have on global growth. But the elections in the state of Baden-Wrttemberg on Sunday were transformed by the events there. After a contest that became largely a referendum on atomic energy, voters swept aside the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel that had governed the state for 58 years, and set the stage for the first German state government led by the Green Party, longtime opponents of nuclear power. The vote is all the more astonishing because Baden-Wrttemberg is a conservative, wealthy state that exemplifies both the post-1945 birth, and the renaissance of Germanys export-driven economy. Stuttgart, the state capital, is the headquarters of Daimler and Porsche. The medium-sized firms that are the backbone of German export success flourish, while the Black Forest embodies a very German reverence of nature. Now the Greens, led by a former Communist, will be in charge. They want speed limits on the autobahns where those Daimlers and Porsches roam free. Their party platform refers to cars as the most inefficient form of mobility. Not only this signals a departure from the old, post-1945 Germany. The most direct affect of the vote Sunday will be to push Germany away from nuclear power, which today provides 23 percent of its electricity. The vote result was clearly attributable to the atomic energy issue, said Dieter Fuchs, a professor of political science at the University of Stuttgart. There is no way that government policy wont be affected. Mrs. Merkel, whose belated conversion to nuclear power critic did not win over voters, conceded as much Monday. In view of the incident in Japan and the shape of things in Fukushima, we simply cant go back to business as usual, she said in Berlin. She also said her party will have to work for a long time to overcome the pain from this defeat. The vote signaled that the categories that have defined politics here since World War II have eroded. For decades, the center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats dominated, with the Free Democrats playing a supporting role. The Greens emerged in the 1970s, from an era of protest untypical of orderly West Germany. Now the Greens are in position to lead a German state for the first time with the Social Democrats as minority partner. Baden-Wrttemberg has sent both traditional governing parties into opposition, the Frankfurter Allgemeine said in a front-page editorial Monday. That is a shock. The Greens espouse many political positions that would be considered left-wing in America, but behind the progressive image lurks a strain of conservativism that was key to success on Sunday. The party has in effect become a new political entity, liberal on social issues but wary of much of modern life. The Green Party is skeptical of digital technology and its potential to be used to gather information on citizens. Its emphasis on preserving the environment was in step with conservatives desire to preserve the traditional character of Baden-Wrttemberg, exemplified by vine-covered hillsides and tidy Black Forest villages. The party also channeled popular outrage against a costly expansion of the Stuttgart train station that had been supported by the Christian Democrats. There is a fundamental skepticism against forced modernization, Mr. Fuchs said. Winfried Kretschmann, the 62-year old former teacher who leads the states Green party, was a communist organizer as a university student but said on his Web site that his radicalism back then was a fundamental political error. Instead, Mr. Kretschmann emphasized his Catholic roots. The Web site of the Green Party reassured voters Monday that its leaders do not plan to tamper with the regions economic success, built around big manufacturers like Bosch and mid-sized engineering and machinery companies. At 4.5 percent, Baden-Wrttemberg has the lowest jobless rate in Germany. The people voted for us in order for the state to remain as successful as it is, the Green party said. The Greens are a mainstream party through and through, especially in this state, said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at the Otto-Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin. That contrasts with other protest parties in Europe, many of which lean rightward, embrace nationalism and mistrust immigrants. The Greens national co-chairman, Cem zdemir, is Turkish. Mr. Kretschmann will face difficult tests of party principles against economic reality, choices that may determine whether the vote in Baden-Wrttemberg marks a permanent political shift or just a short-term reaction to catastrophic events far away. The state is 45 percent owner of Energie Baden-Wrttemberg, or EnBW, which generates about half of its electricity from nuclear power plants. In its election platform, the Green party promised to shut down one plant immediately and the other in 2012. Both have been shut down temporarily because of a moratorium declared by Mrs. Merkel after the disaster in Japan. It is unclear where the replacement power will come from, said Georg Zachmann, an energy specialist at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. In Baden-Wrttemberg there will be some very tough choices to be made, Mr. Zachmann said. The Greens now own assets that they do not want. Its kind of a poison pill. The Frankfurter Allgemeine said: This was a victory in exceptional circumstances. Normal governing will be more difficult.