German SPD leader won't be Hesse premier [party members say no to communists]

REUTERS ^ | Mon Nov 3, 2008 | Reuters

[wolf78]

BERLIN, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Social Democrats in Hesse does not have enough support in her own party to win a vote in parliament on Tuesday and become premier of the influential western state, party sources said on Monday.

The news is an embarrassment for the SPD and strengthens Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose conservative ally Roland Koch will continue for now as premier of an important state which is home to Germany's financial centre of Frankfurt.

Merkel's conservatives rule in an uneasy federal coalition with the SPD in Berlin, but will battle them in the next general election, due in Sept. 2009.

Local SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti had hoped to become premier of Hesse atop a coalition government comprised of the SPD and Greens, but she needed Left party backing in the state parliament to accomplish her goal.

[wolf78]

Social democrats with a backbone say no to communism (real communism, not Obama-style politics).

[babble-on]

For those having trouble following this, the SPD are socialists, but there is a further left party that came out of the ex-Communists in the east, but now incorporates the more Leftist parts of a splintered SPD.

The Ypsilanti woman needed the support of this far left party (as well as the Greens), but her own SPD refused that support, saying they would rather be in opposition than govern with the far left.