A 'red-red' coalition may be the party's best way of beating the governing CDU in Saarland, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
FIVE WEEKS before the general election, Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) have opened the door to a new regional coalition with the rival Left Party.
Opinion polls suggest that the August 30th election in the tiny western state of Saarland could see Heiko Maas (42) become the first SPD leader to win a regional poll in nine years.
But his path to power depends on a pact with Oskar Lafontaine, a former Saar governor and a hugely popular figure in the region.
A decade ago, Lafontaine famously walked out as federal finance minister just a year after engineering Gerhard Schröder’s 1998 general election triumph.
After taking up with the post-communist Left Party, Lafontaine now has his former comrades exactly where he wants them: dependent on his support.
“We’d like to make clear that we’re looking for a co-operation with the SPD,” said Lafontaine. “I don’t think a state-level coalition would influence federal politics, but it would be a signal that a government with the SPD and the Left is possible in [old West German] states.”
Everything now depends on how badly the SPD wants to win.
Taking Saarland from the governing Christian Democrats (CDU) a month before the general election would be a much-needed shot in the arm for the Social Democrats. To that end, Maas has been careful to keep his options open.
Following a precedent set in Berlin’s city-state government, a “red- red” coalition, Maas has said he would find it “interesting” to be elected with the support of the Left Party.
Maas’s strategists say his position is based on the simple fact that it is impossible to get around Lafontaine in Saarland. A former mayor in state capital Saarbrücken, his personal popularity has boosted the Left to almost 20 per cent, well above national support levels.
By keeping his options open, Maas hopes to prevent a rerun of last year’s debacle in the state of Hesse. There, the local SPD leader broke her pre-election promise not to co-operate with the Left Party but was kept from power by party rebels. In a fresh election, Hesse voters punished the party and returned them to the opposition benches.
The SPD’s slow opening to the Left Party is seen as an inevitable development to create new left-of-centre coalition possibilities. But some analysts have called it a sign of the party’s desperation to do so just a month before the general election. “Over half of voters have yet to make up their mind which way they’ll vote,” said Matthias Jung of polling agency Forschungsgruppe Wahlen.
There is a risk that a deal with the Left Party in Saarland could scare off potential SPD voters in the general election on September 27th.
With just 22 per cent support in national opinion polls, 15 points behind the CDU, the SPD candidate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, cannot afford another setback before polling day.
The CDU, meanwhile, has pounced on fears of a red-red coalition to boost its own chances in the Saarland poll.
“The real phenomenon of this election is that Heiko Maas wants red-red in any constellation but is afraid he won’t find a majority for it,” said Peter Müller, Saarland’s incumbent CDU governor, who has dubbed Lafontaine’s return the “second-best comeback since Lazarus”.
With Müller’s grip on power in Saarland far from certain, the CDU could face a second loss on August 30th, when voters go to the polls in the eastern state of Thüringen.