It’s clear that the once-stable German political system is unravelling, propelled by the anti-migrant climate that has emerged since Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted more than one million Muslim asylum seekers since 2015.
On Sept. 1 the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party scored its strongest-ever showing in two state elections in the
former Communist East Germany.
The AfD made gains in both states, winning 27.5 per cent of
the vote in Saxony and 23.5 per cent in Brandenburg. These are
massive leaps from their results in 2014, when the party was only a year old.
The party made a gain of 18 percentage points in Saxony, with a 10-point rise
in Brandenburg.
The AfD was also able to mobilize several hundred thousand
people who had never voted before, initial analysis showed.
Turnout was significantly higher than at the last elections
-- up 16 points to 65 per cent in Saxony and up 12 points to 60 per cent in
Brandenburg.
Within just a few years, the party has managed to rise from
a small fringe group and its popularity is increasing elsewhere in the country
as well.
Meanwhile on the left, the Green party, typically at its
weakest in Germany’s east, gained 8.6 per cent in Saxony and 10.8 per cent of
the vote in Brandenburg. The post-Communist Left party won 10.4 per cent in
Saxony and 10.7 per cent in Brandenburg.
At the same time, Germany’s two established parties, Merkel’s
Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), have now had their
worst showings in those two states since reunification in 1990.
While the CDU will remain the strongest party in Saxony,
with just over 32 per cent of the vote, in Brandenburg they won just 15.6, far
below the AfD total.
The Social Democrats will hold the top spot in
Brandenburg with 26.2 per cent, but they received a meagre 7.7 per cent of the
vote in Saxony, running fifth, behind both the AfD and the Greens.
Clearly, the centre of the political spectrum is shrinking
as the country becomes more polarized.
The old East Germany remains a relatively depressed region,
as well. The AfD campaigned in Saxony and Brandenburg under the slogan
“complete the transition.” They promised to address the inequalities between
citizens of the former east and west.
Founded just before the 2013 federal election, Germans have
now elected the AfD to every state legislature in regional elections.
The party currently holds 92 of the 709 seats in the Bundestag and is
currently the largest opposition party the federal parliament.
The party insists on the primacy of traditional German
culture and rejects Islam as a part of German society.
The past is, of course, no necessary predictor of the
future, and the issues facing the Germany of 2019 are very different from those
of nine decades ago.
But the same political problem – strong parties on the
extremes of left and right -- faced the ill-fated Weimar Republic in 1932, as
Communists and Nazis fought for votes during the Great Depression. The result was
Adolf Hitler.
The next German federal election is in 2021. Merkel will be
leaving office before then – and none too soon.
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