Political Madness, German Edition

[selenak]

In the past weeks, I've been majorly distracted from US and British political crazy by our own, homegrown German political crazy, and thus I want to share the dubious joy. Also because I just read yet another article (which was about a different subject altogether, to wit, Macron) managing to get just about everything wrong about the current govermental situation in Germany in terms of who is who, and I admit it can be confusing if you're not familiar with the backstory. Thus, some (utterly biased) backstory.

Currently governing conservative parties in Germany: these are the CDU and the CSU. ("Christian Democratic Union" and "Christian Social Union" respecticely. The names, btw, are much cause for ridicule these days, not least because the CSU isn''t displaying signs of behaving Christian, social or in a union and hasn't for some years.) Together, they're known as "die Union". Per an agreement hammered out many a decade ago in post war Germany, they've been in a coalition for said decades. The CDU is on the ballots in all German states except Bavaria. Notable chancellors from the CDU: Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and currently Angela Merkel.

CSU: is on the ballots in Bavaria and Bavaria only. With one exception, has held the absolute majority in Bavaria for decades without having to form a coalition with another party to govern said state, which is why CSU leaders tend to behave with some megalomania. (Yes, they are in a coalition with the CDU on a national level, but not, and this is important, with anyone on a state level. Remember, we are a Federal Republic.) The previous one exception to the CSU's experience of one party rule within Bavaria happened when Edmund Stoiber after many a year of absolute rule over party and state made the mistake of announcing he wanted to continue as governor for yet another legislative period. This caused a bunch of other CSU head honchos to realise that they'd soon be too old to have a shot at the top job themselves, and lead an inner party revolt against Stoiber, who never forgave or forgot. Since no one schemes like a dethroned conservative party leader, Stoiber promptly started his own campaign against his successor, Beckstein. This was helped by the fact that the open power struggles led to the irritated Bavarian electorate for the first time foregoing to give the CSU an absolute majority within Bavaria. So they had to govern the state in a coalition with the FDP for one term. They're still traumatized by this experience. (Which is normal for any other party in any of the other German states.) Anyway, this together with Stoiber's scheming led to Beckstein being dethroned in turn and replaced by Stoiber's protege Horst Seehofer. Who got the absolute majority back, which resulted in him becoming even more megalomaniac than the avarage CSU boss, which was a huge factor in the current 2018 situation, where the CSU is currently at a historic low of 35 % at the polls (and it's state election time in October).

But before I get back to the national level, some more Bavarian stuff. One thing particular to Seehofer was that he abused members of his own cabinet in the press, which was something even previous CSU leaders had never done. (Abused each other in private, and per carefully launched indiscretions, sure. But not in authorized interviews with the press.) And there was none he abused more than his future successor, as of this year, Markus Söder. Söder was secretary of finances in Seehofer's Bavarian cabinet and has been gunning for the top job since the last decade. He's alsao incredibly thick skinned (at least in public) not just about Seehofer's insults but being the butt joke of just about every Bavarian comedian's sketch during the last decade either. Bascially, he's Uriah Heep. Last year in autumn, his hour finally came, when Seehofer was weakened by his two years feud with Angela Merkel and the disastrous fallout of the national elections, and thus Söder dethroned Seehofer, who was more or less forced to resign as ruler of Bavaria (but not as head of the party, officially he's still that). Now both Söder and Seehofer tried to combat the emergence of our current bunch of Neonazis, the AFD, as a political party making it in the parliaments by adopting their right extremist rethoric and beating the anti refugee drum non stop. This, however, did not pay off at the polls within Bavaria. People prone to fall for the right wing extremist rethoric still vote for the AFD while the CSU lost all the moderate centrists that used to go to them by default. Hence them going from absolute majority into freefall, as of yesterday 35%, while the Greens, who managed to gain much of the moderate votes the CSU lost, are currently at 17% and rising at polls. Unless a miracle (from the CSU's pov happens), they WILL have to govern in a coaltion within Bavaria after the October election. In a belated attempt to woo back moderate voters, they've sworn never to govern with the AFD, but they also said they'd never govern with the (very pro immigrant) Greens, which leaves them with the FDP (Liberals in the European, not the US sense, used to be pro business moderates in the 70s and 80s, have moved a lot to the right in the last years, weren't donig badly in the last national election but then behaved like asses and have been losing voters since), which might or might not make it into parliament at all, the SDP (also in a freefall due to being in a coaltion with the Union on a national level, constantly arguing with the CSU on said national level, too), or the Freie Wähler ( right wing Bavarian party not campaigning on a national level at all, but also not doing very well within Bavaria since they lost a lot of the right wing protest voter types to the AFD). So it'll be either CSU + two or three other parties or CSU + their arch enemy in a state they regarded as their absolute fiefdom since decades, and they are in a (well deserved) panic. Bear this in mind as motivation for current events.


Now, back to the national level. The CDU/CSU coalition agreement on said national level had remained more or less solid throughout the Bonn republic, whether or not they are in government. There was one major crisis, when the then CSU boss and ruler of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauß, had it out with Helmut Kohl (then CDU boss but not yet chancellor; this was when the conservatives were in opposition on a national level while the SDP was governing in a coalition with the FDP), because Strauß thought he'd make the better future Chancellor, and wanted to end die Union for about give minutes. After Kohl's retort that if the CSU did that, the CDU would campaign within Bavaria, Strauß gave in. (Because he knew this would have ended the CSU's absolute majority within Bavaria. Remember, this is the CSU's holy grail.) Bear in mind here that the CDU/CSU coalition had actually, in order to fulfill their coalition obligation, run campaigns with a CSU candidate for chancellor on a national level. Twice. Once with Strauß (was defeated, never got over it,especially when Kohl was the Union's candidate in the next elections and won), and later once with Edmund Stoiber (who lost as well and had to give way to Angela Merkel who won the next national campaign). So far, no CSU leader ever became Chancellor, but that hasn't stopped any of them thinking they could have done better than whoever was the CDU-originated Chancellor. Which brings us at last to the Seehofer versus Merkel struggle which has been a disaster on just about every level in the last three years. Before 2015, all Seehofer (still basking in having rewon the absolute majority for the CSU within Bavaria) had to argue with Merkel about were whether or not there should be taxes for non German users of the highways, which was a CSU pet subject, and no one paid much attention.And then came the so called "refugee crisis".

(Which, no, did NOT start with "Merkel opening the borders". The borders were already open and had been since the mid 1990s, by EU law, as anyone who travelled from and to Germany by land from any other country could attest. (No border controls within EU countries adhering to the Schengen Agreement.) "Merkel opened the borders" is a lazy journalistic shorthand originated by the AFD which I wish people would stop using. What she did back in 2015 was saying that Germany would accept more refugees in response to the (btw still continuing) horrible situation, as opposed to clinging to the Dublin Agreement (which said that refugees should stay in whichever EU country they first entered, which basically dumps most of the refugees on the Mediterranean countries with a shore.)

This led to Seehofer openly quarelling with Merkel (with whom, again, he was officially in a governing coalition) for two solid years and calling her every name in the book (not surprising coming from the guy who thinks nothing of ridiculing his own subordinates to the press), and then, for the 2017 national elections, performing a U-Turn and telling his CSU voters to vote for her. As absolutely everybody had predicted for two years as well, not many of them listened. Never one to seek fault in himself, Seehofer then proceeded to drag out negotiations for the next governing coalition for nearly half a year, continuing to beat the anti refugee drum and talking about little else in the expectation this would secure the absolute majority for the CSU within Bavaria again in the upcoming state elections. Instead, see above, the opposite happened and is still happening. Now, since Seehofer in between got dethroned by Söder as governor of Bavaria, see above, and is now serving instead as secretary of the interior in Merkel's cabinet (which he resigned from for four or five hours on public tv some months back, claiming "I cannot work with this woman!" and then to great regret for many a German resigned from his resignation), you'd think he'd see the benefit of changing course once in a while and doing something actually constructive, but no such luck. Not our Horst Seehofer, who like all his predecessors excells at vengeance. He knows he's living on borrowed time, having lost the governorship, since undoubtedly after the Bavarian elections in October Söder will blame him from the CSU's loss of the absolute majority, hoping Seehofer as a scapegoat for that impending disaster will prevent his own demise. Then he'll be replaced as the CSU's secretary of the interior as well. (The CSU has never been kind to anyone who can't deliver the absolute majority.) So basically 2018 is the ending of his political career, one way or the other. But he wants REVENGEEEE, and thus according to unkillable rumors he's declared he'll drag Söder and Merkel, the two people he hates most, with him.

Currently, he's doing this via supporting the most loathed head of the German FBI or MI5 in post war history and refusing to dismiss him. Backstory: modelled on the CIA for foreign shores, FBI for the interior spying, we have the BND as our out of Germany spy service and the Verfassungsschutz (literally: "Protection of the constitution") for acting within the country. The Verfassungsschutz' image has never been stellar; one of its most notorious failings happened in the 1990s. When our Supreme Court had to decide whether or not to forbid the NPD (which has now faded into oblivion because its clientele wandered off to the AFD), then the German Neonazi party, it turned out that so many top NPD officials were secretly double agents for the Verfassungsschutz that it couldn't be done. Now, this wasn't the current guy's fault (in the 1990s, he was still busy writing his doctoral thesis aboiut "the dangers of asylum seeker immigration", I kid you not); the Verfassungsschutz being notoriously arch conservative as well as not that able to do anything about right wing terrorists predates him. But he certainly fit right in. Also, to be fair, he was appointed by Seehofer's predecessor as secretary of the interior (as opposed to the FBI, the Verfassungsschutz doesn't resport to the justice department but to the one of the interior). But Seehofer was his boss during the last year, in which the following gems happened: Maaßen (that's the spy chief's name) first denied to an enquiry by parliament that he had an agent anywhere near Amri (the terrorist responsible for the attack at the Breidscheidplatz christmas market in Berlin), but now it turns out he did have an agent in Amri's mosque; the Verfassungsschutz also had an agent near the NSU terrorists (= right wing terrorists responsible for a murder (of people with a migrant background) series in the first decade of the millennia; the interminable trial against the surviving members finally ended last year), once even during an attack, who also didn't stop anything, and Maaßen has those files about the agent in question closed for the next 120 years, I kid you not; and then an AFD (remember, current bunch of Neonazis) deserter revealed Maaßen has repeatedly met and chatted with top level AFD party leaders, coaching them how to avoid being under investigation by the Verfassungsschutz.

Maaßen of course denied the later and at first also kept mum about the former, then modified this to "meeting of functionaries of all political parties represented in parliament is part of my job", never mind he already met the AFD guys before the last national election put them into parliament for the first time. While this made for a slow brewing angry stew of public opinion, things then suddenly changed gear into a bad headline every five hours last week. Two weeks ago, something happened which was reported on an international level, so you may have heard about it. An argument in Chemnitz, Saxony, escalated into one man getting knifed by two migrants. Never mind the irony that the victim was Cuban-German, tending to the left (and liking Facebook groups like "FUCK AFD"), i.e. the very kind of person the AFD bashes when they're alive; in death, he was immediately declared the pure German victim of immigration policy, with right extermists rallying thousands of people to march within hours. (In the following days, there were also counter demonstrations, but not until three days later did these equal the "Identitarian" demonstrations in numbers. One of the most disturbing things the entire event demonstrated was how well organized right wing extremists have become.) Cue people not just shouting slogans but several giving Hitler salutes (which is illegal in Germany, and punishable by months in prison), attacks on people with visible migrant background by members of the demonstrations, and one Jewish restaurant owner (and his restaurant) being beaten up. Cue most German party leaders and upper functionaries expressing outrage and shame immediately. (With the obvious exception of the AFD.)Horst Seehofer, though as secretary of the interior the fact the police had not managed to contain the demonstrations on the first tday fell squarely into his job ressort remained silent for days.

Now, last weekend, Maaßen saw it fit to given an interview to our equivalent of the Daily Mail in Britain, or of the National Enquirer in the US (or maybe Fox News in print form?), the BILD, in which he said that one of the videos showing how migrants were harrassed (as in, both verbally abused and people running towards/after them) was not "authentic", that there had been no proof of any attacks against foreigners in Chemnitz, that it was wrong to speak of people being "hounded" iin Chemnitz that day (which had been the expression Angela Merkel's spokesman, Seibert, had used in his statement for the Chancellor on the day in question), and that the whole thing was in his opinion a tactic to distract from the true outrage of Chemnitz, "the murder" of a German. (I'm putting "murder" in quotes not because the poor guy in question is less dead but because the police is actually charging the two men arrested with manslaughter.) This interview, it later turned out, had been cleared with Seehofer, and Maaßen had even added his "no proof the video is authentic" remark when authorizing the original quotes.

Given that the two men harrassed in the video in question had actually gone to the police to charge the people harrassing them, that this video was one of several showing such incidents, that there had been verbal reports about attacks from 126 (and rising) sources, you might say this caused an explosion all over Germany. AFD and its sympathizers cried with joy, of course (proof that any attack on a migrant was just fake news and part of the big conspiracy, according to the leader of one of the two major spy organizations in Germany). Since, however, renewed detailed investigation of the video Maaßen had singled out failed to produce any evidence it was anthing but the genuine article, Maaßen then revised his statement to claiming he hadn't meant the video was faked but that it had been put online with manipulative intent, that was had he'd meant with "not authentic"', and in any case it was up to the video producers to prove they weren't liars, not to him. And he'd denounced the use of the word "houndings" not to attack the chancellor but to support the governor of Saxony, who'd declared there'd been "no houndings in Chemnitz" (never mind that by now, the police report of that day which the governor in question must have had available before making that statement, and of course Maaßen must have read as well, has been leaked (on national tv, no less) and yes, it describes attacks and houndings with the except hour and minute).

By now, nearly all parties are demanding Maaßen's resignation as head of the Verfassungsschutz. (You can guess the obvious exceptions.) Since one of the parties demanding the resignation happenes to be the SPD, which is in government together with the CDU and the CSU, this means we have a stalemate since Seehofer has declared Maaßen has his complete support. Supposedly, on Tuesday there will be news. A favored guess is that everyone will spend the weekend trying to make Maaßen resign in order to save everyone's faces. Fair chance, since nobody comes out of this well, whatever happens. (Merkel should have fired Seehofer ages ago, even at the price of having to lead a minority government if the CSU had then withdrawn from the Union; Seehofer has been loathsome throughout; Maaßen ditto; and the SPD which only got dragged back into the so called "Groko" (for "Große Koalition" = "Big Coalition" = the two conservative parties and the Social Democrats, who used to be the big left wing party until the last five years when their free fall started in earnest, governing together) when the FDP after the last election refused to form a government with the Greens and the Union), can't do anything right in most voters' eyes right now, no matter whether they stick to their guns and leave the coaltion because of Maaßen or whether they stay with Maaßen or whether Maaßen is dismissed/resigns and they stay.

It's a bitter consolation price that whatever happens, Seehofer is finished on a personal level, and the CSU's absolute rule in Bavaria is over for at least the next four years.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Thanks for the summing-up. I guess my remaining question is “WTF is up with Bavaria?” but I’ve already been told that it’s basically the Texas of Germany.

[selenak]

Texas of Germany: not unless Texas happens to have a lot of towns NOT governed by the Republican party, and a strong ecological party, and has the dominating churches currently lined up against the Republican party. Munich, Bavaria's capital, has had an SPD mayor for the last three decades and remains solidly left wing. (This pains the CSU a lot because it IS the capital.) (Munich was also where the those pictures of arriving refugees from Hungary in 2015 are from. No thanks to Seehofer and his CSU, of course, but my city of residence really came through there. More recently, Söder's new law extending police powers was greeted by 5000 protestors in Munich despite pouring rain, chanting against said law. This, btw, is why the CSU never has their big party assemblies in Munich itself. They go to the countryside for those.) Nuremberg, my hometown Bamberg and many another city is governed by a left mayor in a left-conservative coalition. (It's the countryside population that used to vote CSU en block. But apparantly no more; like I said, the Greens are at 17% right now, and that's not just from the big cities. A lot of farmers are having their input there.) And the CSU, which used to be hand in glove with the Catholic church in the 1950s and 1960s, has had a major fallout with same during the last three years. To the point where the CSU party chairman said they represent Christian belief better than the church does. Note that this isn't about the sexual abuse scandals, which are in Germany like in the rest of the world. No, it's because both the Catholic and the Lutheran church officials are largely pro refugee, and when Söder made it compulsory for state owned buildings to display the cross this year, Cardinal Marx (no relation to Karl *g*), who is the highest Catholic official in Bavaria as well as the arch bishop of Munich, said this was rubbish and a disgusting attempt to draft a symbol of faith into a political tribalism.

Basically: not the Texas of Germany, and far more complicated than that. What it does have in common with Texas is wealth; Bavaria is the second wealthiest state (used to be the wealthiest, but Baden-Württemberg overtook us) , and grumblings about being forced to pay for the other states (via the Länderfinanzausgleich, i.e. the rule via which the wealthier states co-finance the poorer ones like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Also the megalomaniac governors.

[moon_custafer]

Ok, thanks!

[deird1]

To the point where the CSU party chairman said they represent Christian belief better than the church does. Note that this isn't about the sexual abuse scandals, which are in Germany like in the rest of the world. No, it's because both the Catholic and the Lutheran church officials are largely pro refugee, and when Söder made it compulsory for state owned buildings to display the cross this year, Cardinal Marx (no relation to Karl *g*), who is the highest Catholic official in Bavaria as well as the arch bishop of Munich, said this was rubbish and a disgusting attempt to draft a symbol of faith into a political tribalism.

WOW. *jaw drops*

[selenak]

It gets better. In order to woo back the Church (or rather, moderate Catholic voters), Söder had himself photographed kneeling and praying at a statue of the Virgin Mary. Söder is a Lutheran.

It didn't work. The thing is, many of the Bavarian volunteers helping refugees from 2015 onwards come from a strong Catholic background and belong to various lay organizations. And then not only was their (unpaid, honorary) work not appreciated by the Bavarian government but their charges were demonized, called "asylum tourists" by Söder and they, the volunteers, called "enablers". The ones also working in NGOs with ships in the Mediterranean were even called criminals. This understandably made them furious, and then one day Söder, Seehofer & Co. woke up and realised that in their attempt to cover their right flank by out-demagoging the AFD, they'd lost all those people and pissed off a lot of bishops and one Cardinal to boot. Mind you, we also have at least one high ranking Bavarian cleric who is anti-migrants. (Bishop and Cardinal Müller from Regensburg. Thanksfully Pope Francis forcibly retired him last year.) But the overwhelming majority, see above. Also a factor: the declining number of Germans wanting to become priests. (Not a new development, but the uncovery of scandals in the last decade really accelerated it.) This means that an increasing number of priests from African and Eastasian countries get transferred into the the still pretty Catholic Bavaria, because otherwise there would be no priests for many a village by now. And then these guys had to watch Seehofer, Söder and co spout stuff like "what I really worry about are those Senegalese joining our football clubs and serving at our altars, we'll never get rid of them" (direct quote from Seehofer's right hand man Andi Scheuer from 2016). All of which made me go: really, guys? You're REALLY surprised the Church is turning against you? REALLY?

[deird1]

Aussie churches are divided on pretty much everything - but the ONE THING we all tend to agree on is the refugee thing. It’s kinda fundamental to the entire faith...

[gelliaclodiana]

I too would like to say thank you for writing this up, and also, Bavaria, what the hell?

[selenak]

You're welcome, and re: Bavaria, make that CSU: what the hell?, since Bavaria itself is a bit more complicated, see my reply to moon_custafer's comment.

[ex_inklessej388]

This was an awesome post. As someone from across the pond, but who is interested in politics (especially this dangerous-extreme-right-trend), I am glad to have people like you on my f-list who can keep me more informed than the President of France. Haha

I do have one question though, just about the "Merkel opened the borders line" because that is kinda the status quo understanding the migrant crisis in Europe from here in North America, that Merkel invited these people to traverse across Europe to get to Germany and that caused hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives across the ocean. I understand that borders were open within the Euro-zone, but the refugees were coming from countries that were not part of the EU, correct? Or was the EU law so open that, for example, I could come to Germany from Canada and have to be accepted into your country?

[deird1]

I understand that borders were open within the Euro-zone, but the refugees were coming from countries that were not part of the EU, correct? Or was the EU law so open that, for example, I could come to Germany from Canada and have to be accepted into your country?

Speaking as an outsider...

When I was living in Germany, we would drive into France/Austria/Luxembourg. Just... drive in. No stops, no passport checks, no nothing. People cross the border to do their grocery shopping.

Basically, once you're in one Schengen country, no-one's going to care about you travelling into another one.

[ex_inklessej388]

That is my understanding. And that Merkel said "come on in" to people who were otherwise outside of the Schengen zone. Although I am not sure if that is correct at all...

[selenak]

It's not. The death scale in 2015 from people dying trying to cross the Mediterranean or going the Balkan route was spectacularly high. (It's back to being high again now btw.) You might remember the photo of the drowned little boy on the beach in Turkey, or the Pope at the camps in Lampedusa, Sicily, or the refugees at the Hungarian border put in camps, or the reporter from Hungarian tv kicking a fleeing refugee on camera. (Should be still on YouTube.) Then Merkel said that Germany would accept the Syrian refugees currently stuck at the Hungarian border. She didn't see "everyone". She acted in an extreme emergency situation.

Now that's not to say you can't critisize her, not least because the refugee situation didn't start in 2015, either, it started years earlier, and as I said, due to the Dublin agreement especially Greece and Italy with their Mediterranean borders were overhwelmed with it. The solution Merkel suggested in 2016 and which alas was refused, to wit, put the refugees into all EU countries with the numbers going according to wealth and population of the countries in question, should have been suggested far, far earlier, but it wasn't. But "Merkel invited everyone in" is as false a narrative as "Merkel opened the borders".

[ex_inklessej388]

Perfect! Thank you very much for taking the time to explain and expel my false understanding.

[selenak]

You‘re very welcome!

[msilverstar]

Thank you, I love knowing more about places that are not covered by US media.

Also, go Greens?

[selenak]

Indeed. I'm pretty sure that Söder and the CSU won't be able to swallow their pride enough to ask them into a coalition come October, though. They'd rather have anyone else (well, other than the AFD and Die Linke, the hard left party which never made it into Bavarian parliaments anyway), given the hardcore "never with those damn hippies!" message they've been drumming this year. They already had to do two message U-Turns that made them prone to ridicule ("Angela Merkel is bad! Vote Merkel" in 2017, and "Refugees are just touristy sponges taking all your money! Also, Merkel is betraying our core values! No, we love our migrant brethren (if they pay taxes and vote CSU), and we're standing for more politeness and decency in politics! in this spring), so selling a "Greens: Not so bad and riculous after all. Let's try a coalition!" is probably not on for the CSU. At least not this year.

[genarti]

Ugh, what a mess! Thank you for laying it out so clearly. At least there are a few consolation prizes, I guess, however bitter... :/

[selenak]

True. The biggest consolation price is that the "adopt the right extremist rethoric" gamble has so spectacularly backfired on the CSU and empowered other parties instead. If it had worked as intended, things would be even worse. As it is, it's kind of hilarious to watch the 180% U-Turn Söder had to do in recent months in order to woo back the moderates, complete with visiting Turkish restaurants, holding speeches for more kindness in politics, and cuddling puppies from shelter homes (I kid you not). (This also isn't working for him or the CSU.)

[deird1]

Well. That's WAY more interesting than Australia's current political debacle. We're just backstabbing each other on a federal level - but your guys are all imploding in several separate areas at once!

I wish my German was still up to snuff so that I could read some newspaper articles...

[selenak]

I'll try to find something in English that's accurate and link it here to you if I do.

Links

[selenak]

Okay, here's an article by DER SPIEGEl in English which is, however, already a bit out of date (doesn't yet contain Maaßen admitting the video itself is not faked but insisting that what he meant by "not authentic" was "uploaded with manipulative intent", for example).

This is a good article in English by DIE ZEIT about the Chemnitz riots which was published before Maaßen gave his outrageous interview to BILD, so there's no reference to it, but it gives a good overview about what happened in Chemnitz, and how everyone responded.

And an up-to-date article by Deutsche Welle, summing up the situation, again in English.

ETA: And And another one specifically about Seehofer.

[kaffy_r]

Thank you so much for this dense and important read. As someone else said, it's good to hear about things that don't get covered by American/North American media. We need to hear about these politics because they affect our world, despite our cultural tendency toward isolationism whispering in our collective ears that we don't need to hear anything but our own news *fingers in ears la-la-la*

[sovay]

Unrelated: is your icon a reference to Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7?

[kaffy_r]

Alas, nothing quite so literary; it's a reference to the ABC Marvel Cinematic Universe show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Level 7 is a top level of agent security. (I'm not sure I could deal with Roshwald's novel, judging by its plot. At my age, in this world, I can't deal with that sort of bleak scenario.)

[sovay]

In the past weeks, I've been majorly distracted from US and British political crazy by our own, homegrown German political crazy, and thus I want to share the dubious joy.

That is profoundly dubious, but I appreciate the information.

[selenak]

Very dubious, and you're welcome. Just for kicks: last month Horst Seehofer has said that since the "mainstream media" keeps misrepresenting him, he's going to join twitter and tweet. Yes, really. (So far, he hasn't followed up, though he had said he wanted to start in September. But then the mockery from all quarters following that announcement has been relentless. Not least because even our hardcore conservatives have trouble regarding the Orange Menace as someone to emulate. They're rather fanboying Orban and Putin.)

[sabra_n]

Thank you for this write-up!

[selenak]

You're welcome!

[sgac]

Do your guys do the thing where they say "We will govern in majority or not at all!" and then when the election results in no one having a majority, they have to get together with the minority party after all? Tasmania's state elections frequently result in neither Labor or Liberals having a majority, and the Greens in the balance of power getting to choose which one they want to govern with.

Both Labor and Liberal hate this so, so much, and the best bit is, they brought it on themselves. 10-20 years ago (I don't know off the top of my head) they got together to reduce the number of seats in the lower house in an attempt to get rid of the Greens. Surprise - it didn't work. Now they have a backbench of like 3 people and still can't govern in majority.

And they can't undo it, because getting Australians to vote for increasing the number of politicians is pretty much impossible.

[selenak]

We always have a coalition government, which for decades was either CDU/CSU & FDP or SPD & FDP or, when the FDP lost their status and percentages as kingmakers in the 1990s, SPD & Greens (those were Gerhard Schröder's two terms beween Kohl and Merkel, and the first time the Greens made it not just into state but national government; Joschka Fischer was the first Green secretary of state and thus had the honor of telling Rumsfeld, Cheney & Co. when they made their "Saddam totally has weapons of mass destruction!" pitch at the Munich G7 conference "I am not convinced" (can't stand Schröder because of his Putin fawning, but I am grateful the Schröder/Fischer combo said no to Bush from the get go). Then there is something called the GroKo, which happened once in the later 1960s, and is happening now, which is CDU/CSU & SPD, which is like Britain being governed by a Tories & Labour coalition and only happens if there isn't a majority in parliament in any other way. It's not popular with any of the participants and never has been. Two of Angela Merkel's three terms have been a GroKo and one in between a coalition with the FDP, which promptly failed to achieve the 5% necessary to get into national parliament in the subsequent election, which meant it was back to GroKo for term 3. For 4, originally the SPD had refused to enter another GroKo, so at first there was a negotation for the so called "Jamaica Coalition" (named for the colors of the Jamaica flag matching the parties in question) - CDU/CSU & Greens & FDP. This amazingly enough did not falter because of a CSU & Greens clash but because the FDP decided they didn't want to after all. Which meant it was back to GroKo negotiations, and then Seehofer dragged those out for months, as mentioned, because he wanted an official upper limit of refugees in Germany (200 000 per year), and no one else wanted to give him this. It was quite the circus.

We haven't had yet a true minority government in that the CDU/CSU combination was the strongest party in all conservative governments (just not enough to form a parliamentary majority on their own), but we would have one if die Union breaks up. The reason why all Chancellors, conservative or social democrats, have avoided a minority government so far is that while it's constiutionally possible, it makes everyone whisper the words "Weimar"...

[pujaemuss]

Thanks for the synopsis - very informative. And timely as well - just seen on the BBC that Maassen is being ousted. Unfortunately ousted to a higher paid sinecure, but at least no longer in charge of the BfV.

PJW