- Angela Merkel: Another day, another crisis | Editorial
Last night's three rounds of voting did much to restore the drama the German constitution has tried to expungeChoosing a German president is boring by design, largely because the last head of state to make the job exciting was Adolf Hitler. The post is ceremonial and decided by secret ballot in a special assembly of MPs, state representatives and even celebrities. There is no move to make it a direct election – even though that would now be popular in a country confident of its democratic institutions – and the reason for that is also buried in the past: to prevent a wave of populism emerging.Even so, last night's three rounds of voting in the Reichstag did much to restore the drama the German constitution has so conscientiously tried to expunge. The nail-biting finish (hundreds were gathered outside the Reichstag to watch the event on giant television screens) had less to do with the two main candidates than it had with the plummeting fortunes of Chancellor Angela Merkel herself.Nine months into a coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), the dream partnership has turned into something of a nightmare. Unlike the grand coalition with the SDP before it, neither side has been able to blame their wobbles on the need to keep the other party's backwoodsmen quiet. The result is that the two rightwing parties have been bickering constantly. Guido Westerwelle, the FDP leader, has been sidelined as foreign minister. And relations were not helped when Merkel ditched her plans for tax cuts, the main item on the FDP's manifesto, after a heavy defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state.Merkel's political touch also seems to have left her. Relying on a coterie of political friends, she was surprised by some heavyweight resignations, such as president Horst 状態の最後の頭は仕事を刺激する主な理由投票の最後の夜の3回のラウンドは、ドイツ憲法はしようとしたドラマを復元するデザインで退屈はドイツ大統領expungeChoosingには、多くのでしたアドルフヒトラーだった
- Germany: too weak, too strong | Martin Kettle
Divided over its commitment to the eurozone, riven by the resignation of its president, Germany is a nation set against itselfTalleyrand once said that the problem with Russia is that it is always both too weak and too strong at the same time. After the upheavals in the eurozone over the Greek bailout and now the resignation of the country's president over military policy, is the same now true of Germany?Germany's position as primus inter pares in both the eurozone and the European Union always underscores her economic and political strength. The bailout for the Greeks boiled down to whether the Germans, inevitably, were prepared to take on the lion's share of the loans. In the end, in last month's fractious Bundestag vote, they did so. But German taxpayers, who (the British often forget) have spent most of the last 20 years bearing the cost of the economic rescue of East Germany, are fed up of spending so much of their money on bailouts for others. Last month's Land election in North Rhine-Westphalia proved there is no political reward to be harvested from good deeds for others. The crisis has left Angela Merkel weakened and with few good options. As a result Germany has one large party, the CDU, which vacillates about doing the right thing and is punished, and another, more diminished party, the SPD, which would once have been ready to do the right thing but is now more interested in profiting from voter anger – as its ringing abstention in the Bundestag over Greece proved.A similar uncertainty runs through the saga of President Horst 。öhler's resignation this week. All 。öhler actually said in his controversial radio interview was that a large economic power like Germany, with its major export interests (Germany has been the world's biggest exporter, though its positi ユーロへの取り組みで、その大統領の辞任により分割された、ドイツ国家itselfTalleyrandに対して設定されて分割後、ロシアの問題は、それが常に両方すぎる強者と弱者と同じ時のものですだ
- Election of German president undermines Angela Merkel | Alan Posener
Merkel wanted to use the election of Christian Wulff to prove she could discipline her coalition. Instead it has made her look weakThis week, Germany got a new president: Christian Wulff, an uncharismatic politician who until then had been content to rule the state of Lower Saxony, home of Volkswagen. The German president played an unhappy role in the Weimar Republic, and the post is a ceremonial one without any power. He or she is elected by an assembly dominated by the political parties. Since the governing coalition under Angela Merkel had a majority in the assembly, Wulff's election should have been a matter of form, and the whole election little more than a political blip, considering the drama unfolding in South Africa at the football World Cup. However, things turned out very differently. The circumstances of Wulff's election may prove to be the death-knell of Angela Merkel's ill-starred second term as chancellor.For a start, the election was the result of an embarrassment. Wulff's predecessor, Horst Köhler, had resigned in a huff following criticism of some remarks he made while visiting German troops in Afghanistan. (He had said, quite rightly, that an international trading nation such as Germany had an interest in guaranteeing stability and open trade routes all over the world, if necessary by military means. This was construed as a call for gunboat diplomacy.) Merkel had to come up with an ersatz president quickly, and so she did. Wulff was nominated within a couple of days.However, this quick fix turned out to be a mistake.Many members of Merkel's fractious coalition of conservatives (CDU) and liberal democrats (FDP) were angry that they hadn't been consulted and began to look at the presidential election as a chance to get their own back. When the social de メルケルは、彼女ができる規。彼女連立を証明するクリスティアンヴルフの選挙を使用していました
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2006.03.
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