Free Republic

It was a perfect training program. Angela Merkel's seven years in the opposition -- time spent fighting off challengers within her own party to finally emerge as the Christian Democrat (CDU) candidate for chancellor in Sunday's general elections -- gave her plenty of time to put together her campaign recipe. A pinch -- but only a pinch -- of reform talk. A handful of job market fixes. A dash of tax-code modification. Bake until Sept. 18. Serves 82 million. But apparently, the directions weren't clear enough. Instead of a campaign about the economic future of Germany, Merkel is now furiously...

The country is in trouble. Unemployment is high, the economy seems to be locked in a long, slow decline, and there is widespread unrest, especially in the depressed areas. Things have to change, a fact that most citizens acknowledge, but who's going to make those changes happen? Reckoning on the popularity of the man in charge and the mixed public attitude towards the female leader of the opposition, the governing party has decided that its only real chance is to call elections earlier than expected. With elections fast approaching, however, it looks like it may have made a big mistake....

ON SEPTEMBER 18, THE Germans will go to the polls. The extraordinary elections are being held a year before the end of the Bundestag's regular four-year legislative term, thanks to an elaborate and, to many Germans, distasteful charade. That price would be well worth paying if it produced a government with the will and mandate for much-needed political and economic reforms. Germany "confronts monumental tasks," President Horst Köhler observed in a televised address on the need for fresh elections. "Millions of people are unemployed, many for years. Federal and state budgets are in an unprecedented, critical condition. The existing federal...

Germany's opposition Christian Democrats on Friday accused chancellor Gerhard Schröder of using lies and dirty tricks to discredit Angela Merkel, as a fresh opinion poll indicated that the chances of a decisive election victory for the CDU leader appeared to be slipping away. Volker Kauder, CDU general secretary, attacked the chancellor for allowing his Social Democrats to spread “bare-faced and brazen lies” about the CDU's tax proposals. The unusually harsh criticism of the chancellor suggested the CDU is scrambling to regain the political upper hand, following the publication of the third poll in three days predicting the CDU will fail...

The conclusion statement of Angela Merkel in the TV duel came some observers in the SPD strangely admits forwards. Some passages sound actualy word for word like the conclusion, which the presidential candidate at that time Ronald Reagan spoke 25 years ago on television in a duel against president Jimmy Carter. Coincidence? Berlin - 28 October 1980: 80,6 million Americans sit before the television and pursue the television duel between the democratic president Jimmy Carter and his republican challenger Ronald Reagan. The two stand in the Public Music resound in Cleveland, they are moderated from a ABC man Howard K....

The longer the German campaign goes on, the more painful it becomes to watch as it descends into inanity. If you're waiting for a serious discussion of issues, forget it. Plus, Europe battles against raging flood waters as more damage is caused and the death toll rises. It ain't happening. Instead, the German electorate, which is admittedly not terribly interested in the campaign pitting Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Gerhard Schröder against Christian Democrat (CDU) Angela Merkel, has been treated to a steady diet of inane predictions as to the shape of the future ruling coalition. The occasional insult fired off...

BERLIN, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Germany's conservative opposition and their likely Free Democrat coalition partners have rebounded from a recent poll slump and are once again on track to win a majority in a Sept. 18 federal election, a survey showed on Friday. An Electoral Research Group (FGW) poll for ZDF television found the CDU and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, would win 43 percent -- up one point from a week ago. The FDP were steady at eight percent in the Politbarometer poll, giving a CDU/CSU and FDP alliance a total of 51 percent. The coalition...

Merkel presents election team BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- Conservative leader Angela Merkel was offering a taste Wednesday of her future government team if her party wins Germany's election, presenting a group of advisers expected to include a law-and-order hard-liner and a radical tax reformer. Merkel's "competence team" falls short of a shadow Cabinet, given that key posts -- traditionally including that of foreign minister -- would likely go to a coalition partner if her Christian Democrats dislodge Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government in the September 18 election. However, the presentation allows the challenger to look ahead after trying to repair damage...

THE German election campaign was becoming predictable. Chancellor Gerhard Schršder's leftist administration was wheezing and puffing to a halt after a dismal few years of rising unemployment with few ideas about how to solve the country's economic malaise. The conservative candidate, Angela Merkel, seemed certain to romp to easy victory, although her insufficiently radical policies to turn around the economy have convinced few. What the campaign needed was controversy and last week it got it. Former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine chose this moment for his political resurrection. The vociferous man from the Saar - whose strident political rhetoric and old-style...

Germany needs painful economic reforms. That, at least, is what politicians were saying last year. But this year, the emergence of the new Left Party has seen all major parties veer to the left and dramatically soften their rhetoric. Which is grim news for Germany. Here's a string of un-fun facts about Germany -- not for the sake of feeding Germany's near pathological pessimism, but to foster an honest conversation about the future. Since German reunification in the early 1990s, all growth in the country has been financed by billions in public debt. The national debt has doubled to €1.4...

Germany's ruling party yesterday set the stage for a polarised electoral campaign as it endorsed a manifesto targeted mainly at leftwing critics of its recent economic reforms. The Social Democratic party, in its document, seeks to preserve Germany's current social welfare and labour regulations, and avoids spelling out reforms that economists believe are needed but which the leftwing core of the party fears. "All that is new can only succeed if it is grounded in the tried and tested," it claims. "We want to renovate our country, but we do not want any other country." The platform, entitled "Confidence in...

Red-green agrees on expansion of the element of a crime (Machine Translated) Red-green notified itself on that to expand the element of a crime of the Volksverhetzung. Accordingly should be future the approval or glorification of human right injuries under the national socialist punishable because it injures the Menschenwürde (Dignity) of the victims. Highly punishment: three years custody. DPA NPD-Aufmarsch before that Brandenburg gate (archive) : approval or glorification of Nazi human right injuries should become punishable Berlin - like the "Berliners newspaper" today out of coalition circle reported, had resulted therewith an Eingrenzung of the Strafbarkeit and the punishment...

An election in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein has dealt a blow to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, exit polls suggest. His Social Democrats (SPD) won only 38.5% in the state election, behind the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) on 39.5%, according to the TV polls. It is not yet clear whether the SPD will be ousted from power in the state. The SPD had appeared to be bouncing back in opinion polls since losing a series of state elections last year. Economic woes have compounded Mr Schroeder's problems Heide Simonis (SPD) has been running Schleswig-Holstein since 1993. She is Germany's...

A SENIOR adviser to Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, has been accused of passing confidential documents to East Germany in the 1980s which revealed how the British Army and RAF would react to an attack by Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces.The details were among more than 100 pages of material allegedly given to the East Germans by Karsten Voigt, 63, a former MP who now works for the German foreign ministry as co-ordinator of German-American relations. He spent yesterday at an international security conference attended by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary. The German magazine Focus claimed this weekend that in...

BERLIN (AFP) - German voters in the state of Saarland vented their anger at Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's harsh labour market reforms, dealing his Social Democrats their worst defeat there in four decades. Despite low turnout, voters still left the Social Democrats (SPD) smarting by slashing the party's score by one third from 44.4 percent in the last state election in 1999 to a dismal 30.8 percent, according to provisional results. It was the worst result for the SPD in Saarland since 1960. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took advantage of weeks of protests that had seen tens of thousands...

Report: Germany mulling cutting aid to PA Spokesman for ruling SPD party calls on EU foreign ministers to stop financial payments to Palestinians if the power fight in the government gets any worse. Maariv International Amidst corruption allegations and a leadership crisis, German politicians are calling for measures to be taken against the government of Yasser Arafat, including a freezing of European Union aid. The foreign policy spokesman for the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), Gert Weisskirchen, has told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that EU foreign ministers should stop financial aid payments to the Palestinian Authority if the power fight...

BERLIN - A senior member of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's own party on Wednesday contradicted the German leader’s demand that the US swiftly hand over Iraqi sovereignty to leaders in Baghdad. "Let me remind you again of the German example. It took four years (after the Nazi defeat in 1945) until we had a German government,” said Hans-Ulrich Klose, a member of Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) and deputy chairman of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Klose, speaking in an NDR radio interview, noted that Iraq had far fewer structures and political leaders needed for nation-building than did Germany after the...

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on Monday tied his political fate to a special party congress on the government’s controversial plans to reform the welfare state and spur the economy. Giving in to demands from the grassroots of his Social Democratic party (SPD), German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder agreed to hold a party congress on June 1 after meeting with the SPD leadership in Berlin. Effectively turning the event into a vote of confidence, SPD General Secretary Olaf Scholz said the reforms would be voted upon as a complete package at the congress. “We believe there is now a situation where it...

GERMANY’S coalition Government was on the brink of collapse yesterday as details emerged of a row between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, and Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister, who threatened to quit over differences on Iraq. Herr Fischer, the leader of the Green Party, was enraged over weekend press leaks of a Franco-German plan to establish a UN protectorate in Iraq. The leak, to Der Spiegel magazine, appeared to come from the Chancellery or Social Democrat headquarters. The Foreign Minister immediately telephoned Herr Schröder to demand an explanation. “It was a loud and emotional exchange of views,” a German diplomat said....

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was dealt another blow yesterday when German unemployment shot up by almost 10 per cent in the biggest monthly increase for five years. Nearly 400,000 Germans lost their jobs in January, taking the total to 4.6 million, or one in nine of the entire workforce. Gerhard Schröder: hoping reforms will save the economy The rise for the same period last year was 250,000 and the previous year 280,000. Wolfgang Clement, the economics and labour minister, yesterday admitted the seriousness of the figures, saying they were a reflection of the country's "grave structural problems". Opinion polls showed that...