Berlin Mayor Klaus Woworeit - OTA-Berlin
There could be a possible unexpected silver-lining for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from the dark clouds of the Berlin city election last month, wherein, as expected the Social Democratic SPD won the largest number of votes.
Yes they did lose 2.5 % of the popular vote from 2006 elections and yes the CDU gained about 2.5% of the popular vote and again stayed as the 2nd largest party.
The surprise in this election was the rise of the Piraten Partei and the demise of the FDP. I dealt with this in previous blog.http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/09/19/chancellor-merkel-actually-makes-gains-in-berlin-local-election-piraten-partei-win-first-seats-incumbent-sdp-mayor-wowereit-wins-third-term-as-expected-commentary-by-emil-hoogensteyn/
German Lander or local state elections are often an indicator of national feeling or sentiment for the Bundestag or central federal German government.
In the main, the Green Party are the Social Democrats preferred partner, however plans to extend the A100 motorway in Berlin Treptow, the SPD supports and the Greens oppose.http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin-aktuell/article1784634/Klaus-Wowereit-laesst-Rot-Gruen-in-Berlin-platzen.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_100
Therefore a new ‘Grande coalition’ between the SPD and CDU in Berlin – like the federal coalition which the CDU had with the SPD between 2005 and 2009 – is the most likely outcome of recent talks. The coalition would be more stable than an alignment with the volatile Greens.
In this case the maxim of ‘’Sun Tzu’ “keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer’ comes to mind” is applicable!
The SPD Mayor Wowereit has ruled any talks with the ‘LInke Partei’– who are also opposed to the building of the highway – however they are too left for the SPD which already has become part of the German establishment.
This opportunism is mirrored all over Europe .As with the Labour party in the UK, the Social Democrats really do not want to rock the boat too much for fear of losing their support from the status quo – namely the people who own and run Germany.
The ‘Piraten Partei’ are completely new to Berlin politics and should provide some honesty to the proceedings. They will be warmly welcomed by a Berlin public wary of ‘the established partys. We will see how all of this developes in the next weeks.
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Possible boost for Merkel in Berlin – SPD mayor Wowreit could chose CDU as Berlin coalition partner – by Emil Hoogensteyn from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
Tags: 'Red Berlin', 'sun tzu', Berlin coalition SPD with CDU, Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, LInke Partei’, Merkel's CDU in coalition talks with SPD in Berlin, opportunist SPD, piraten partei, Rote-Berlin, Treptower Park
