It seems like Berlin’s classic and iconic old airport Tempelhof will remain an oasis in the heart of the German capital after that the people’s movement who wanted to preserve the old airfield area as an open space for the impromptu mixed uses which have developed after the closure of the airport. Among the many activities people now enjoy there are ecological gardening, biking on the abandoned runways and flying kites over the vast open space.
The German federal election became a success for incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU, but simultaneously something of a problem in that the liberal FDP, the traditional CDU/CSU ally, for the first time in German post-war history saw themselves voted out of the Bundestag. This means that Angela Merkel now has to find a new coalition partner, which by necessity would mean either the social democrats or the greens. In either of these cases it will mean lengthy and difficult talks before any coalition may be put in place.
The most likely outcome is a new grand coalition between the Christian democrats and the Social democrats, but this won’t be achieved without a great deal of bargaining. The SDP is most likely wary of sitting in a coalition as the junior partner again, with clear memories of the not all that rewarding time in the latest grand coalition of 2005-2009. The Greens on the other hand are perceived to be further from the CDU/CSU in ideology, even if the differences in key areas such as the nuclear energy question much have disappeared after the Christian democrats’ u-turn after Fukushima. A CDU/CSU-Green coalition is not ruled out, but remains the more unlikely option for now.
For the first time has a Pirate Party entered the political arena for real. With nine percent of the votes in the election in Berlin, the German Piratenpartei managed to get a good bit above the threshold limit and enters the Berlin Abgeordnetehaus where it will have 15 of the 152 seats in the parliament.
Is this the beginning of a new political movement getting a foothold in German and European politics, much like the green parties once started their road to become a serious part of the European political landscape, or is it only a temporary fad and more of a protest against the established parties? It is yet a little too early to tell. There certainly are signs that the issues that the pirate parties count as their core areas – personal integrity, data protection, net freedom and the likes – are growing in importance, much like during the 1970s and 1980s the environment got in focus. The question is if this new set has the momentum needed to foster a new political alignment. That the Pirate Party get their first real success in Berlin is in itself not all that surprising. The city has a relatively large number of people with alternative lifestyle views and on top of that a booming creative and internet-focused culture. Even so it still must be seen as somewhat surprising that almost one tenth of the voters chose to give their vote to this yet untested party. The future will tell if the Pirates manage to repeat their electorial success in other, more traditional parts of Germany or not.
From what it looks, the German Greens have won their first government premier position in the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. With 24.2 percent of the votes the Green Party managed to become bigger than their traditional ally SPD with 23.1 percent. This by all likelyhood means that the next premier in Baden-Württemberg will be the Greens’ Winfried Kretchmann in a Green-SPD minority coalition government. The Christian Democratic CDU which are traditionally strong in the region got 39.0 percent of the vote and are now losing their grip over the state government for the first time since 1953.
Even if the circumstances can be said to be unusually in favour of the Greens’ politics, with the local debate over Stuttgart 21 – the big rebuilding of the railway station in Stuttgart – as the main focus and the nuclear disaster in Japan as a backdrop, it could also very well be seen as a possible bigger shift in political preferences, especially in Germany where the Greens have gone on to becoming a big, established party besides the traditional left and right parties SPD and CDU/CSU and catering to voters that want something else than the traditional parties.
The German election for the Bundestag (federal parliament) resulted in that the current chancellor Angela Merkel can continue in office, but with a change of coalition partner. Instead of the grand coalition between CDU/CSU and SDP, there will now be a more traditional coalition between the Christian democrats in CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP.
Source: ARD Tagesschau
