Posted on 06/14/2004 6:59:43 AM PDT by Pikamax
Schroeder's party licks wounds after EU, state election debacles
14 June 2004 = = ATTENTION -Schroeder quotes /// Stinging defeats in the European Parliament election and a key state poll plunged German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) into a fresh crisis Monday, sparking calls for a cabinet reshuffle.
After scoring its worst outcome since World War II in Sunday's European election -- down to a dismal 21.5 percent from 30.7 percent in 1999 -- the SPD acknowledged that voters had punished the party for the government's tough economic reform drive.
"We are in the middle of a difficult reform process," a visibly shaken Schroeder told reporters as he entered a meeting of the SPD leadership in Berlin early Monday.
The lowest previous result for the 140-year-old party dated back to federal parliamentary elections in 1953, when it won just 28.8 percent.
The conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its small sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), together scored more than double the SPD result with 44.5 percent, in the first EU elections since the bloc expanded to 25 nations from 15.
There was further bad news for the SPD in state elections in Thuringia, which saw the party's share of the vote fall from 18.5 percent to 14.5 percent.
The CDU scored 43 percent, retaining its absolute majority of seats in the state parliament.
The CDU chairman in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, told ARD public television that the SPD's disastrous result marked "the beginning of the end for Gerhard Schroeder".
Although most opposition deputies ruled out calling early elections to eliminate Schroeder, all said they were gunning for the next national ballot in 2006.
"The CDU will put as much pressure as possible on the government to speed up its replacement," said Hesse state premier Roland Koch.
Sunday's losses represented only the latest in a long string of electoral defeats for the party, which has for months seemed paralyzed by the faltering economic recovery in Germany -- the biggest economy in the 12-nation eurozone -- and its own dismal poll ratings.
SPD members said a reshuffle of the party leadership after the elections would be premature. Schroeder was forced only in March to abandon the SPD chairmanship to make way for a key ally, Franz Muentefering.
But changes in the cabinet looked increasingly appealing to many in the traumatized party, with Finance Minister Hans Eichel and Health Minister Ulla Schmidt appearing most vulnerable in an possible political cull.
"I expect a critical debate now about the role of the cabinet," the deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Michael Mueller, told the conservative daily Die Welt.
The SPD premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Peer Steinbrueck, who will be facing his own uphill re-election race next May, blamed the weekend disaster on divisions in the party and the widespread impression that Schroeder's so-called Agenda 2010 package of social welfare cuts punished the poor.
"I was always among those who criticized the Agenda because it is socially unbalanced," he told SWR public radio.
"But you can only practice politics in a party if you are prepared to agree on what has been decided and defend it together. I think we give the impression that the cabinet members are following their own agendas."
Schroeder, for his part, insisted there was "no alternative" to his austerity program for health care, pensions and unemployment benefits.
"I can only continue with these policies and I want to continue only with these policies," he said.
Did somebody say vindication?
The CDU scored 43 percent, retaining its absolute majority of seats in the state parliament.
The CDU chairman in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, told ARD public television that the SPD's disastrous result marked "the beginning of the end for Gerhard Schroeder".
Nuff said!
Their so called economies ironically will not survive without these reforms, and the politicians will not survive implementing them.
SIMPLY DELICOUS! LOL!
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ping
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