CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel’s September re-election hopes have improved after the strong performance of her preferred coalition partners, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), in a weekend poll.
That vote left Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) certain to retain power – with FDP support – in the western state of Hesse, home to financial capital Frankfurt, after a year of political deadlock.
The weekend result was the first sign, in a year filled with state, European and national elections, that Dr Merkel’s days as head of a grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) may be drawing to an end.
“With enough votes to form a coalition in Hesse, the CDU/FDP result sends a signal to voters nationally,” said Dr Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University, Berlin.
Retaining Hesse is a remarkable reversal of fortune for the CDU and its controversial state premier, Roland Koch. A year ago, it looked like Mr Koch was on his way out after an election campaign dominated by his verbal attack on “young, criminal foreigners”.
But when the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) fell short of enough votes to take office with the Green Party, party leaders proposed a minority SPD-Green government tolerated by the reformed communist Left Party.
That plan broke a pre-election promise, split the party and forced fresh elections; voters, furious at a wasted year of party politics, abandoned the SPD in droves.
Despite Mr Koch’s relatively poor election showing, holding steady on last year’s historically low result, a seven-point jump in support for the FDP will keep him in office.
The result is a shot in the arm for the FDP and its leader in Berlin, Guido Westerwelle. After more than a decade in opposition, the party has been struggling in recent years to retain its liberal, pro-business profile.
Now the party hopes to play a greater role in public discussion of the economic crisis. The weekend poll has given the FDP a stronger role in policy-making in the upper house, the Bundesrat. In particular, the party hopes to force changes to a €50 billion stimulus package agreed earlier this month.
“We want to improve the situation of citizens and will be very carefully looking to see where we can ease their burden and reduce debt,” said Mr Westerwelle.
He will meet Dr Merkel this week for talks on that package, as well as the general election in September and his designs on the foreign ministry.
Dr Merkel said yesterday that her party would fight its own general election campaign, but conceded that the weekend was a “good result”.
“Clearly that we have a CDU-FDP majority in Hesse gives me a positive feeling,” she said.
Political observers in Berlin are now watching for signs of a blossoming courtship between the two party leaders.
Their first collaboration is likely to come in May when, with FDP support, the CDU will vote to re-elect President Horst Köhler to a second five-year term.