Hans Rustad Den politiske situasjon i Tyskland er mer alvorlig enn tyskerne selv tør å ta inn over seg. Valget er også et varsel om at folket i Europas største økonomi ikke er modent for reformer, etter sju år med nullvekst og 11 prosent arbeidsledighet.
Ikke bare er det et stort politisk nederlag for et livskraftig demokrati. Det er også et alvorlig varsel om at EU-landene ikke lever i samfunn med maksimal trygghet og lav risiko, skriver John Vinocur i Herald Tribune.
De vanlige politiske maktspillanalysene er kjedelig lesning. Vinocur får frem hvor dramatisk og alvorlig situasjonen i Tyskland er.
It’s a blow to Europe’s hopes of economic and social renewal sometime soon. And it’s a massive kick in the shins for new optimism about a country so strong that Europe cannot work without it, yet one so short of confidence in its politics now that it voted both to oust the status quo of its leftist government while holding at arm’s length the mildly risky job-creating trade-offs proposed by the center-right.
In a year when Europe’s sense of a unified future was severely wounded through the rejection of a European Union constitution by France and the Netherlands, this election went beyond being another notional defeat for the EU’s perspectives as a global force. Rather, because of Germany’s importance, its angry indecision can only shake EU members’ own notions of living in a community of limited risk and maximum stability.
How to rationalize into reassuring normality in the reflexive EU manner, that after seven years of no growth and mass unemployment, instead of clearing a way forward, Germany now has a defeated chancellor in Gerhard Schröder who insists he is its only feasible leader.
Schröder er åpenbart part of the problem, not the solution. For ham betyr Tysklands interesser åpenbart lite, opp mot hans egne.
Since Schröder has no likely coalition partner, his probable intent is to force a political street-fight against a background of insecurity, block Merkel from forming a government, and very possibly open the way to new elections.
How, at the heart of Europe, do you rationalize a massive power play of this variety, more Bolivian in feel than Berliner Republik? A leading Christian Democrat I talked to said it involves a destructive political game, disconnected from the issues, and tied for now to Schröder’s bunkerish subtext of without-me-it-all-comes-down-on-your-heads.
Tyske velgere må bære ansvaret for situasjonen. De sa, som mange norske gjør: ja, takk begge deler. De vil ha omstilling, men uten risiko. Forskjellen er at Norge har råd til det. Ikke Tyskland, til tross for at det er verdens største eksportland.
Vinocur har en skarp observasjon av maktmennesket Schröder:
Schröder came close to a Howard Dean moment, hovering near, then avoiding, a step out of the normally well-managed area of his public personality into the not-under-control zone where Dean’s candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination imploded.
Coming onto the set, grinning cockily, Schröder steamrolled over a reporter’s question about being voted out of office and insisted, just like that, that Germany had picked him as its next chancellor. When the reporter again pointed to the Social Democrats’ loss, Schröder turned it into a comparison with the party’s 2002 score. Only when Fischer, opposed to Schröder’s decision to advance elections by a year, drove home with a sardonic look that a defeat was a defeat, did Schröder’s face grow serious.
For a moment – while also underscoring his brutal determination to hold on over the next weeks – Schröder had gone too far in revealing what Fischer once called the «machtmensch» in him, or a person exclusively interested in power. In irritation, and perhaps more than at any time during the campaign, Merkel then succeeded in embarrassing her opponent: «The chancellor seems to have difficulty realizing Red-Green has been voted out,» she said.
