207 votes in favor, 394 votes against and 116 abstentions. Olaf Scholz has lost the motion he himself requested from the Bundestag. “In this way, today’s session is over and so is the ‘Traffic Light coalition’,” joked the president of the Bundestag, the social democrat Bäerbel Bas, when announcing the result. The social democratic chancellor thus achieves his objective of opening the way to early elections after the breakup of the government coalition with Greens and Liberals that he had led since December 2021.
Before losing the vote of confidence, Scholz settled scores with his former finance minister and president of the FDP liberals, Christian Lindner. “Politics is not a game. To enter a government you need the necessary moral maturity,” Scholz said at the beginning of his 30-minute intervention that opened the debate on the motion of confidence. Without needing to mention Lindner, every parliament has understood who Scholz’s words were directed against, who accused the FDP of “sabotaging the government.” The coalition of social democrats, greens and liberals broke out on November 6 with the dismissal of Lindner by the chancellor.
Immediately afterwards, Scholz delivered a speech in the key of an electoral campaign with a strong social democratic accent: decent wages, defense of jobs, affordable rents, redistribution of wealth and public investments in infrastructure and defense with a reform of the debt brake constitutionally anchored in Germany, a decision that prevented necessary investments in infrastructure such as the railway network, roads, bridges or public schools of the leading European economy. This last point was precisely one of the fundamental differences between the Social Democrats and Greens, on the one hand, and the FDP liberals, on the other, who blew up the tripartite government.
Merz defends Lindner
The second politician to intervene was Friedrich Merz, leader of the parliamentary opposition, president of the conservative CDU and probable future chancellor of Germany. If Scholz’s tone has been electoralist, Merz’s has not been far behind. The right-wing Christian Democrats have harshly attacked Scholz and the legacy of his government. “You are leaving the country in one of the biggest economic crises in post-war history,” said Merz, who proposes a liberal-conservative economic recipe: fewer taxes, less public spending, more hours worked and, in general, less government interventionism. State.
Merz has not hesitated to come to the rescue of the liberal Lindner, who sits a few meters from him in the Bundestag. The conservative chancellor candidate has described Scholz’s words against the liberal leader as “disrespectful” and “impertinent.” The obvious objective of the conservative CDU-CSU union is to govern in coalition with the FDP, which is currently fighting in the polls to overcome the 5% barrier that gives access to the Bundestag.
Merz has taken advantage of his intervention to reject a coalition with the Greens. “We counteract the redistribution of the social democratic and green economic policy with an economic policy of competitiveness,” said Merz, looking towards the government bench and before proposing that Germans work an average of “200 more hours a year”, as “in Swiss”.
Greens and far right
The green Robert Habeck, still federal vice chancellor and candidate for the chancellorship of the environmentalists, and Alice Weider, the candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), have closed the speeches of the four main parties in the country. Habeck has been self-critical of the failure of the tripartite government, but has also highlighted what he considers the legislature’s achievements: having cushioned the closure of the arrival of Russian gas and governed despite the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Weidel, in line with his party, has drawn an apocalyptic panorama: an economy in ruins, unsafe streets full of illegal immigrants and a Europe on the brink of World War III due to Western military support for Ukraine. The ultra leader has attacked both the government parties and the conservative opposition. With this strategy, he wants to shore up the second position with close to 20% of the votes that electoral polls have been giving to the AfD for months.
The electoral campaign in which Germany is immersed clearly draws two blocs: that of the social democrats and greens, the two parties that still govern in a minority, and that of the conservative union of the CDU-CSU and the liberals of the FDP, which aspires to govern in a two-party coalition next year. Meanwhile, the far-right AfD intends to block the governability of Germany while waiting for the conservatives to one day open up to ending the cordon sanitaire and coalition with them.
Pending the official decision of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the date of the elections, German citizens will predictably decide on February 23 how the political game continues for a country that long ago said goodbye to the much-praised political stability. German.
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