THE GERMAN chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to form a new government with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) no matter how tight her parliamentary majority.
A week before the general election, that majority is melting away in opinion polls showing she may end up with a second grand coalition government with the rival Social Democrats (SPD).
“We need a stable government that can concentrate on job creation and reducing bureaucracy,” she said in Berlin yesterday. Asked why a second grand coalition could not be as stable as the first, she said: “This was a stable government but history won’t repeat itself.”
Analysts say Dr Merkel is worried that a second grand coalition would weaken her authority in the CDU, and could leave her exposed should the SPD jump ship mid-term and form a left-wing alliance with the Greens and the Left Party.
This is possible – mathematically if not, for now, politically – according to the last public television polls before the September 27th election. Two polls, for ARD and ZDF television, give a Christian Democrat (CDU)-FDP coalition a narrow majority with 49 per cent support.
The SPD has risen three points in both polls to about 26 per cent, attributed to a stronger-than-expected performance by party candidate Frank Walter Steinmeier in last weekend’s television debate. But the SPD gains have come at the expense of potential coalition partner the Greens, who have suffered a two-point drop. In both polls, the Left Party is polling 11 per cent. As the majority narrows for her coalition of choice, Dr Merkel’s CDU may be rescued by a quirk of the German two-vote electoral system. This allows for parties to claim extra MPs elected with the first, direct candidate, vote even if this gives them more seats in parliament than they are entitled to based on the second vote from the party list.
“A election law is as it is, there are no second-class (parliamentary) mandates,” said Dr Merkel yesterday.
Yesterday’s ARD poll found that 58 per cent of Germans favour a CDU-FDP government, while 35 per cent want a continuation of the grand coalition.
As her first term draws to an end, she was asked yesterday how being chancellor had changed her life. “It’s different going shopping when almost everyone knows who you are,” she said.
“Particularly when they say, ‘What? You buy tinned artichokes?’. Then they show me where the fresh ones are".