Zhou Ruirui
Since the German election day on September 26, 2021, there has been no new article for a long time. Please don't be too quick to accuse me of laziness. Because, with the emergence of a complete list of cabinet ministers, Olaf Scholz was finally promoted from quasi-prime minister to the next prime minister. But until then, all I can do is wait passively in a mood similar to opening a blind box.
On December 6, 2021, the last vacant position in the new government, the Minister of Health, was occupied by Karl Lauterbach, a public health expert and Social Democratic Party member who had long been famous for advocating an iron-handed fight against the epidemic. The first official list of ministers of the new government was released immediately. At this time, more than two months have passed since the German general election. For more than two months, every day has been filled with all kinds of little news. They are like countless fragments flying in the air after a mirror has been smashed. Each reflects a little bit of the truth from its own angle and then falls slumped, leaving only residue on the ground that is difficult to clean and easy to cut your hands.
On December 8, 2021, in Berlin, Germany, the new German Chancellor Scholz and cabinet members were sworn in at the German Bundestag, marking the beginning of the Scholz era in Germany.
The noise of the general election came to an abrupt end on the day of the election. Immediately, he plunged into a dark tunnel. At the end of the election campaign, all parties ended up as both players and pawns, foreshadowing an extremely complex process of trying to form a government, with mutual checks and balances, permutations, and offensive and defensive dynamics. In sharp contrast to the eager and expectant mood of the public, suspense has become suspense: not only all parties have kept secret about the communication process, but even the always lively media has entered an extremely conservative state after the election. There are small and trivial reports, but there are very few connections and comments on the larger situation. There is an official announcement after the conclusion is made, but the details of the process are all missing. The general election on September 26 left a puzzle to the entire German society. People were only informed of the results but not the process of solving the puzzle.
No matter how the media people inquire, all they can get are some vague words. Marcus Lenz is the host of a long-established professional political commentary program. In "normal times" and even during election campaigns, this program has always been regarded as an object that must be fought for by various political parties, and it is even a platform that they flock to to build their own image on it. In a program with the theme of government negotiations, one of the guests was Kevin Kunert, the campaign manager of the Social Democratic Party. Lenz asked a lot of straightforward questions on the show, ranging from "Let's talk about it, didn't you have a phone call with the person in charge of negotiating the formation of the government in the party? How is this possible?" to even a little sullen. "Well, you just made up your mind not to say anything." Kunert, on the other hand, was unwilling to give any specific answer despite angering Lenz.
The official tight-lippedness not only leaves the media with a lack of writing material, but is also a sensitive signal for media with many years of experience. No one wants to lose their professional reputation by making random speculations or misjudging the situation in an unclear situation intentionally created by the authorities. No one is sure whether the news in today's newspapers is a smokescreen or part of real progress. After all, just a few days before Lauterbach was officially announced, the media (including many major media) were still full of the impression that "Lauterbach has no hope of being the health minister", and even more than one article was written to express it. Analyze how Lauterbach missed opportunities due to strife within the Social Democratic Party. In this context, any in-depth discussion and further speculation is meaningless (here is also an explanation of why I have been "quiet" for a long time: because most of the news that broke out in these two months is in such a The background is not enough to support an article that is comprehensive, in-depth, meaningful and not sensational). The media's caution has also led to a thinning of public discussion and even public opinion supervision: How can we talk about it if there is no information?
Along with the ambiguity in the government formation negotiations, there is also the fourth wave of the new crown epidemic. After the election, Germany is faced with obscure and trivial cabinet formation arrangements and a resurgence of the epidemic accompanied by the drop in temperature and the spread of variants. In 2021, Germany experienced a very cool, almost cold summer.The fourth wave of the epidemic lurked in German society, which was excited by the election. It emerged after the election and quickly avenged people's neglect and insensitivity to it with a surge in the number of infections.
After the election, Germany has become two worlds: one world is the small political circle that brings together the top negotiators and politicians of each party. They will decide the future of Germany through talks, but they close the door and no one knows They talk about whatever they want, how they want to talk about it, and what they talk about. The other world is the vast German society intertwined with extreme anxiety and numbness. The latter world is noisy, while the former world only contains whispers that cannot reach the outer ears.
Documentaries about old wine in new bottles are beginning to appear on TV: the content is still the most common account of the history of Germany before and after the Third Reich. The narrative perspective is how an unhandled crisis drove Germany and the world into the abyss. Everything is secretly telling the confusion of this society but does not dare or cannot express it openly.
html For the general election on September 26, it took a day or two for the official vote counting results to be released. The tension in the election campaign continued after the election: the Social Democratic Party narrowly won with an advantage of two percentage points, the Alliance Party hit a record low, the Green Party was less than 15%, and the Liberal Democratic Party was not far behind its votes.Before delving further into the future, the results should be analyzed. Especially those parties that have become opposition parties should not be ignored. As I predicted in my previous summary, in this election, all parties in Congress are both chess players and pawns. Therefore, even the opposition parties do not lack influence on the negotiations to form the cabinet or even the new government - they just retreat to the background. That’s all.
For example, the Left Party’s position in Congress has been full of twists and turns: when the second vote had just been cast, the Left Party got 4.8%, which was less than the 5% threshold. It was about to be squeezed out of Congress, and was subsequently voted out of the first place. vote saving (it is admitted that the second vote is more important, because the first vote elects the members of the specific constituency, while the second vote basically determines the distribution of congressional seats. Usually, what people call "general election results" refers to the second vote. vote statistics). In sharp contrast to the second vote that did not reach the threshold, the left party candidates won resoundingly in three constituencies, thus retaining the 39 people who entered the National Assembly as "direct members". Therefore, there is only one reasonable explanation for the left party's disastrous defeat in the second vote: it was their punishment on behalf of the left wing of the Social Democratic Party represented by Esken - the voters did not forget that her vote in Scholz had just started to soar by two or three I was anxious to meet with representatives of the left party after a few weeks. The votes obtained by the left party are voters saying no to the "red, red and green" combination, and "red, red and green will bring a dictatorship of economic terror to the entire left" is a rumor that the Alliance Party has been making since the late election campaign.
According to Germany's "Basic Law", after the election day, the federal government cabinet led by Merkel will still be in office until the first plenary session of the new federal parliament is held one month later on October 26. Even after October 26, as long as the new government has not completed the formation of the cabinet and been sworn in, Merkel will have to continue to serve as caretaker prime minister.
And the final trend of things is indeed like this. Merkel leads caretaker cabinet and serves as caretaker prime minister for as long as possible.
On November 24, 2021 local time, Scholz (second from left) attended a press conference and announced that the three parties had reached an agreement to form a cabinet. The first from the left is Lindner, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, and the third and fourth from the left are the co-chairmen of the Green Party Bell Burke and Habeck.
About a week after the election, a selfie was circulated in major media: the Green Party’s prime ministerial candidate Barbock and the coalition leader Habeck, together with the Liberal Democratic Party’s prime ministerial candidate Lindner and Secretary-General Falk Wessing. Appears in a selfie. Twitter caption: "The rock band is back and looks good!" The leaders of the two parties met quickly and used social media's own people-friendly official announcement method. The boiling public opinion was like a soldering iron dipped in cold water, and then fell silent after a few wisps of smoke.
was too quiet for the huge suspense Germany faced. And this silence actually continued. Contrary to the rapid start of the contact negotiations to form a government, it is actually difficult to form a government.
This is because the joint selfie of the leaders of the two parties is not so much a sign of mutual recognition, but a way to appease voters. On the eve of the end of the election, the situation has become clear: the winner can only be produced within the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance Party, but there will not be an overwhelming majority. Therefore, the direction of the new government depends to some extent on the choices of the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats combined. However, the ideological "non-compliance" between the two parties is well known. Fortunately, the Green Party, which has just obtained election results that doubled the polls when it officially announced its candidate in April, needs to prove to voters that it is still capable and can fight, and it has been dormant for many years and under the previous government. The Liberal Democratic Party, which lost power due to the collapse of the "Jamaica Alliance" during the negotiations, did not want voters to see that the hard-earned opportunity to govern had been screwed up again. Therefore, they must reach an agreement, or at least try to reach an agreement.
Although the relevant people rarely disclose anything because they are in a prisoner's dilemma, careful observers can still roughly divide the difficulty of forming a cabinet into two parts: the first part centers on the fate of the Alliance Party, and the second part revolves around the Social Democratic Party, The battle between the Greens and the Lib Dems unfolds after "just each other".
Although the Alliance Party lost the general election, the Alliance Party was not eliminated from the beginning. Because, theoretically speaking, the number one vote-getter may not necessarily be the prime minister. In the governments formed in 1969, 1976 and 1980, the prime ministers were Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt (in the latter two years, Schmidt was re-elected), They lost to their opponents in terms of votes in the general election that year, but because they received the support of other parties, they successfully formed a cabinet and became a great prime minister.
Obviously, Armin Laschet, then leader of the Alliance Party, was unwilling to give up, either out of a sense of honor or out of consideration for himself. I wrote in a previous article that in order to go all out for the general election, Laschet gave up the nomination of the constituency, which is the first vote, and put all his money on the second vote. Once you lose the election, you may even lose the qualification to enter Congress as an ordinary member of Congress. And he not only lost the election, he also lost miserably. Not only that, the Alliance Party even lost the hometown of prime minister candidate Laschet and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where he was the governor: the CDU received 26% of the vote here and the Social Democratic Party 29.1%. This is a disgrace to both the Coalition and Laschet. All things considered, Laschet can only hope to retain the leadership of the party and even his political career by leading the Alliance Party to form a government. Once he gives up, he is likely to face political retirement because he no longer has "meaning to exist" within the party. Therefore, in the first stage after the election, Laschet has been trying to drum up people's support for the "Jamaica Alliance" (black, yellow and green), whether through mobilization within the party or through propaganda outside the party.
Laschet's attempt was quickly disrupted. After hitting a record low of 23%, various members of the Alliance Party suddenly appeared in public. Although he lost the election, there is no hope of forming a government at this time. Everyone hopes that they can be that hope. However, the voice of " Jamaica " is gradually declining. There are two reasons behind this. The first reason is that there are not that many Laschet supporters in the Coalition, which is understandable. The second reason is that within the Alliance Party, factions quickly emerged: Spahn, Dobrindt, Merz, and Rotgen all expressed their demands and desires for the party leader. Behind the hilltops lies not only the rift between the CDU and the CSU, but also the lack of candidates and political platform.
As a result, two things happened within one week in October: the "traffic light" government formation negotiations began for the first time with formal intentional contact, and Alliance Party leader Laschet had the intention to quit and announced that he would comprehensively re-elect the party's leadership. . The two events happened just a few days apart.
Although many mountains within the Alliance Party have risen at the same time, any one of them will not be enough to become a mountain that can overwhelm everyone in a short period of time. Internal fighting quickly consumed the Confederates' remaining fighting spirit.Then-Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Economy Minister Piet Altmaier announced on the same day that they would no longer run for the next CDU leadership, announcing the withdrawal of Merkel's cronies. and the consequent reshuffle of personnel within the party. The Alliance Party, which had no time to think about anything else, finally accepted the result of going into opposition.
The contacts between the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Democratic Party have evolved under this background and become more and more "sincere". The Green Party, which was the first to make a move, announced that it planned to support Robert Habeck as deputy prime minister. Habeck and Prime Minister candidate Annalena Barbock are the co-leaders of the Green Party. Not supporting the candidate for prime minister but supporting Habeck as deputy prime minister not only shows that the Green Party has already planned for such a situation, but also serves as a test for the other two candidates for cabinet negotiations. After gaining no opposition, the Greens became emboldened.
However, the Green Party is very clear that it cannot "ask too much". Otherwise, first of all, not the Social Democratic Party, but the Liberal Democratic Party will not support it. For example, the Green Party and the Liberal Democratic Party have been competing for the position of finance minister for a long time. Finance Minister is the position where would-be Chancellor Scholz has made achievements in Merkel's government. It is also related to taxation, so it is a big deal. The Liberal Democratic Party took a tough stance and eventually won.
The difficulties in the three-party cabinet negotiations stem from the constant testing of each other. Everyone wants to bid higher, but everyone is afraid that the bid will be too high and other people will leave the table. Looking at the cabinet candidates, all three parties have made considerable compromises to form the cabinet.
First of all, the Social Democratic Party. In the "small cabinet", only the interior minister is a comrade of his own party. Financial power is in the hands of Lindner, the current leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. Habeck of the Green Party even holds multiple posts. In addition to being the deputy prime minister who was not rejected, he also combines economy and environmental protection into one. Even Balbok, who made major mistakes in the election and had no experience in governing, got the position of foreign minister. Instead, the Minister of Health, who had the most thankless task during the epidemic, was left to himself.
But that doesn’t mean the Greens can rest easy. They must make a lot of concessions to the Liberal Democratic Party in order to successfully form a government. The beauty of the small cabinet is the promises they have to keep to voters. In the incoming government, tax will play an important role in transforming industry, calming the post-pandemic society, and even the environmental protection on which the Green Party itself can gain a foothold depends on tax. However, taxation falls within the jurisdiction of the Liberal Democratic Party, which is far from its political stance. In addition, the Green Party has no other important positions outside the "small cabinet".
From the perspective of the Liberal Democratic Party, it is certainly a victory to rejoin the government after many years. But the Liberal Democratic Party is also the only right-wing party in this cabinet. In addition, because the election results are the weakest among the three parties, the corresponding number of members of Congress is also the smallest. The friction after taking office can be imagined.
Perhaps because of this entanglement, the government formation negotiation agreement followed the style of each party's campaign platform before the general election: long, but vague where necessary. This 180-page government negotiation agreement intentionally or unintentionally adopts a title that echoes history: "Dare for more progress" - in 1969, under the leadership of Willy Brandt, also a member of the Social Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party and the FDP formed the first alliance with both social and liberal tendencies in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the cabinet formation agreement was titled "Dare for More Democracy."
is equally social and liberal, equally "for the first time in history", the subtitle of "Dare for More Progress" is "Alliance for Freedom, Justice and Sustainable Development". As if to appease voters' doubts about the alliance formed by these parties that tend to "have nothing to eat", the subtitle adopts a method that clearly allows each party to obtain its own expression in it: Freedom What justice is to the Liberal Democrats, justice is to the Social Democrats, and sustainable development is to the Green Party.
Compared with its two opponents, the Social Democratic Party, which leads this government, can be said to be the slowest in action. Until the official announcement of Lauterbach at the Willy Brandt Building on December 6, Scholz kept secrets of his plans or those of the party. However, the leaders of the two left-wing parties, who have always been "prickly", expressed their approval for the negotiations on forming a cabinet. However, there are subtle differences in the statements of the two party leaders.Walter Borjans, who has given up re-election as party leader, is relatively straightforward: The Social Democratic Party has returned with high spirits and full blood. It has once again become the leading force in Germany. It has to activate the braking mechanism that the Alliance Party has blocked for a long time and even failed. The Alliance Party is now the opposition party. You should think about your own affairs. In contrast, Esken, who had a clear desire to retain the position of party leader and originally had more disagreements with Scholz but was determined to win the ministerial position in the new government, was not so full but also said some diplomatic rhetoric. : "We use traffic lights to write history. Such progress is not that easy to achieve. It requires courage."
On the first weekend of December, the Social Democratic Party had already voted on the government formation negotiation agreement. Immediately afterwards, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Green Party also passed the government formation agreement with high votes in the next two days. The high vote unanimously expressed the three parties' sympathies for the long and torturous negotiations to form a cabinet and their fervent hope of gaining a ticket to power. The new government is finally taking office.
On December 8, local time, Scholz accepted the appointment from German President Steinmeier at the German Presidential Palace.
It is clear that incoming Chancellor Scholz has long-term goals. The current government has not yet taken office, and he is already thinking about the next one. He told the Social Democrats that the cooperation with the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party was for "friendly cooperation and for us to be re-elected". At the special party congress of the Social Democratic Party, he also - as the agreement on forming the government implies - mentioned Willy Brandt in 1969, the first federal chancellor of the Social Democrats: "Like (Victoria) Leigh Brandt), we can do it again.”
Regarding that dark tunnel and everything that happened in it, up to now, all I can say is "It's over." Germany has finally reached the end of the tunnel, and the journey ahead can be made public.
Editor in charge: Zhu Fan
Proofreader: Zhang Yan
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