The Hindu : International : Schroeder faces mid-term crisis

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Wednesday, Sep 08, 2004

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International

Schroeder faces mid-term crisis

By Simon Tisdall

LONDON, SEPT. 7. Another election, another debacle for the hapless German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder. Since winning a second term by a whisker in Federal polls in 2002, he has suffered one humbling reverse after another in State-level ballots. Increasing doubts cloud his long-term political survival.

The weekend rout of his Socialist Democratic party (SPD) in the western State of Saarland followed six defeats in seven regional polls since early last year.

Further humiliations loom this month in Assembly elections in Brandenburg and Saxony and in municipal contests in the long-time SPD stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Vote share falls

The party has indeed fared spectacularly badly under Mr. Schroeder's leadership, losing about 20 per cent of its members since 1998 when he became Chancellor.

In June's European elections, its share of the vote fell to 21.5 per cent. In July, an opinion poll registered 20 per cent SPD national support, its lowest ever.

Opposition to Mr Schroeder's leadership within the party is growing, centred on his old rival Oskar Lafontaine.

Such challenges, disorganised at present, could prove fatal if watershed Assembly elections in North Rhine-Westphalia next May are also lost. Analysts say such a result could shift the balance of power in Germany's upper House, the Bundesrat.

On this analysis, Mr Schroeder has eight months to turn the political corner or face potentially irresistible pressure to step down. Yet the Chancellor's mid-term blues are hardly all his own doing.

To attribute his problems simply to political cack-handedness and his contentious Agenda 2010 welfare ``reforms'' (cuts) may be to miss the broader point. To a greater degree than at any time since the Berlin wall toppled in 1989, and perhaps since 1945, Germany is a country in transition. Long-held assumptions are under threat; the old ways of doing things are changing.

People dissatisfied

They are also becoming more conscious of, and more dissatisfied about, their country's relative decline in European terms. Economic stagnation has psychologically scarred a nation raised on talk of Germany's post-War miracle, the report said.

In a sense, Germany's sense of disorientation is exacerbated by the diminishing influence of the Franco-German axis within the E.U.; by its repeated spats with the E.U. over its rule-busting budget deficits; and by its still barely mended rupture with the Bush administration over Iraq. As American troops prepare to abandon their German bases after 60 years, swapping ``old'' Europe for ``new'', the sense that in Germany the old order is passing grows irresistibly.

How to straddle this divisive transition is both Mr Schroeder's challenge and his potential ruination. —

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