West Germany chooses a chancellor
Bonkovsky, Frederick O.
WEST GERMANY CHOOSES Frederick o. bonkovsky A CHANCELLOR jp^^A 11 Dreams Realized After Thirty-two X^^^^L Years" announces a German periodical at M^m^^^ year's end 1986....
...Only once in the thirty-seven years of the Federal Republic has any of the parties singly gained a majority in the parliament...
...and the USSR, without leaving NATO...
...Participation fell from 84 percent in 1982 to 78 percent, and some SPD voters shifted to the Greens, pollsters say...
...Foreign Minister Genscher (FDP) argues that the Soviet offers for a zero option on medium-range weapons, for reduction of intercontinental weapons, and continuation of the ABM agreements may yet be achieved...
...Traditionally, German elections, which must be held at least every four years, are highly competitive affairs...
...However, from March 1986 to September 1986, polls and projections held that the ruling Christian Democratic Union — with their Bavarian Christian Social Union sibling, (CDUCSU) would get some 44 or 45 percent of the votes while the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) garnered several percent less...
...The key was that many traditional SPD voters simply stayed home...
...Replacing nuclear energy may not be so difficult, argues the SPD, noting that today only 6 percent of Germany's energy comes from nuclear generators...
...Germany is highly industrialized, and the steel workers' union (IG Metall, which also includes the equivalent of the United Auto Workers, among other groups) is the largest workers' organization in the world...
...The party proposes that NATO and the Warsaw Pact bilaterally change to stable (v...
...In Brokdorf, construction of a new nuclear reactor has now been halted after months of pitched protest...
...discussions...
...14: Commonweal The CDU-CSU and the Greens differ measureably in style, ideology, and program...
...Inflation has been the gravest German domestic worry since the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was critically injured by inflation which reached a million percent...
...Meanwhile, unemployment has risen from under one million in 1979-80 to over two million, exceeding 8 percent, despite four years of steady 3 percent GNP growth...
...Thus, unlike most of Europe, it is committed to receiving and providing for these refugees with years of public support...
...A northsouth split, similar to the U.S...
...One youthful group, "The Church from Below," for example, challenges the traditional Catholic authorities from within the church...
...Later estimates put the CDU-CSU party at some 48 percent while the SPD fell to 37 percent...
...But the likelihood is that the difficult issues will be swept aside in the happiness over prosperity...
...The 92 percent of Germany who are employed, however, have rarely had it better...
...For the Kohl government and the CSU, such talk by the SPD 16 January 1987: 15 (let alone by the radical Greens) threatens the entire structure of peace and freedom based on security...
...A more secure Soviet Union is a better partner for peace in the world...
...Prosperity may allow the Federal Republic to avoid dangerous and disturbing questions...
...JHHHk s in conservative Bavaria, so in Brokdorf, ^^^K^^^L West Germany's northerly working-class ^^^^^^^^k city, the big gains went to the Greens...
...Moreover, he notes that it is in German self-interest to assist the Soviet Union toward greater stability and security by assisting the Russian economic developments in those areas which do not threaten NATO security...
...In response to this fall's assassination of a leading foreign ministry official outside his home in Bonn, the conservative government has just enacted new laws regarding demonstrations...
...The Christian Democrats gained too, up to 41.9 percent from 38.6, but the CDU total was up only 3,000 votes...
...Kohl's credentials as a faithful Roman Catholic are almost as thoroughgoing as Rau's Protestantism, despite the fact that Kohl could hardly be the son of a Catholic pastor...
...All the parties have now taken on the Greens' concerns while, of course, not giving any credit to the Greens...
...German democracy is alive and well...
...The SPD refers to its proud 120-year tradition of providing a counterweight to rapacious capitalism, and promises legislation if it comes to power...
...Hitler succeeded Weimar (1933-1945) and the Federal Republic was formally born in 1949...
...Catholics are divided over whether they may listen to such alternative voices...
...His CDU-CSU colleagues add that the Soviets are negotiating because of U.S...
...the Greens 9 percent and 10 percent...
...A small group of hard-core terrorists remains active in West Germany...
...Before Bavarian state elections in October, the German Roman Catholic primate, Joseph Cardinal Hoeffner of Cologne, head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, made headlines with the opinion that a Roman Catholic may not vote for the Greens...
...The parties provide good spokespersons so the ninety-minute or two-hour-long discussiondebates are at least on a par with U.S...
...The SPD quickly rose to the challenge arguing that the refugees were really not a big problem and that Germany had a special moral and political obligation incurred during the Nazi period...
...The Greens, as is well known, doubt both superpowers...
...He is fifty-three and has a much younger wife, young child, and new baby born during the campaign...
...From the editorship, Rau stepped directly into elective SPD politics where he has been for two decades...
...They favor a demilitarized and denuclearized Europe and call specifically for a nuclear-free and alliance-free zone in Europe...
...SPD 43 percent and 37 percent...
...And the Greens registered gains in that election, 7.5 percent up from 4.6 percent in 1982, and so entered the Bavarian parliament...
...The two large stateoperated television networks gave significant prime time to discussions of major issues...
...Plutonium waste, after all, radiates for 500,000 years...
...There is little evidence that other western polities will be more bold or competent than the young democracy so precariously situated between the Rhine and the Elbe...
...And the cardinal, his critics note, does not link this issue or armament increases with the CDUCSU...
...mobile) defense strategies and systems...
...When heavily Roman Catholic Bavaria held its state elections in October 12, 1986, Minister-president Franz Joseph Strauss, the grand old wily conservative of Central European politics, led his CSU to an absolute majority of 55.8 percent...
...The then Bavarian Minister for Education and Culture, Hans Maier, in his other capacity as head of the Roman Catholic Kirchentag Committee, announced that compromise between Catholics and Greens was impossible...
...The Greens' Petra Kelly unabashedly blames "Herr Reagan" and his SDI for the collapse at Reykjavik...
...But the American lead of guaranteeing peace and freedom through security needs to be followed...
...To be sure, disarmament negotiations are desirable...
...But Germany does not have the American advantage of lying between two oceans, thousands of miles away from its major competitors...
...projections ranged from 41 to 44 percent for the SPD...
...One-third of Germany's Green parliamentarians are teachers...
...Only after five to seven years of processing are some people declared "economic refugees" and ordered to leave the country...
...It sounds like U.S...
...The CDU, on the other hand, despite differences, gleefully warns that if the SPD gets many votes, the CDU will form a national coalition with the dreadful Greens...
...Unhappily noting that Central Europeans are "nuclear hostages to the superpowers," the Greens want the German people to rethink even such taboo questions as the future of NATO...
...politics during the middle Reagan years...
...The tested, tried, and for forty years successful NATO policies of deterrence through strength and nuclear weapons must not be put in doubt...
...The Social Democratic tradition is strong...
...While Baden-Wurtenberg and ¦ Bavaria are booming and Hessen and Palatinate are doing well, Schleswig-Holstein, the Ruhr, and other northern places are in distress as old industries decay...
...In their September convention, the SPD hoped they had a winner with Rau...
...But it is the Greens whose specific and engaged proposals set the debate...
...The party itself is heavily concentrated among persons between twenty-five and forty.' 'The activist generation'' has come to maturity with the plusses and minuses that implies...
...Here, as elsewhere, the Greens stimulated the debate and raised nasty questions...
...Like American conservatives, the Christian Democratic-Christian Social coalition sees the Soviet Union as the singular threat...
...By contrast, remember Caroline and John-John Kennedy...
...Coming from the Christian wing of the SPD, Rau's major shaping influence was the Reformed congregation of Barmen in the Ruhr Valley, which played such a central role in the 1934 opposition to Hitler...
...In late summer, thousands of Sri Lankan and other thirdworld people were pouring into West Berlin from East Berlin and so overrunning West German refugee facilities...
...The CDU notes that 600,000 new jobs have been created since 1982...
...A strong Mark, low oil prices, and 92 percent employment are good things...
...the sun belt also characterizes Germany...
...Not surprisingly, in late fall polls Kohl's popularity rose to 51 percent...
...All major parties agree that environmental criminals must be sternly punished, but the government has not passed new environmental legislation...
...The pregnancy and new baby received hardly FREDERICK O. BONKOVSKY, who did his doctoral work at Harvard, currently is visiting professor at the Johann Goethe University in Frankfurt on the Main...
...The ongoing success of the Greens is noteworthy...
...Price Stability Finally ^^^H^^^^ Achieved," is the title of the accompany^^^^^^^^^ ing graph...
...The SPD argues that the new laws threaten civil liberties...
...The central ecological issues and formulations of 1980 have proven remarkably prescient...
...The messy near-collapse and sale for one DM of a country-wide labor-linked social housing corporation has made it impossible for SPD Chancellor candidate Johannes Rau to mount an effective campaign...
...The SPD is less dramatic, less Utopian, more specific and more part of the ongoing NATO debates...
...But the CDU is not ready to follow this logic...
...the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 4 percent and 4 percent...
...By contrast, the CDU emphasizes free market economics and aiding the business sector, while limiting social benefits...
...The Greens propose to abolish Germany's moderately conservative abortion law...
...Energy use is the same as it was in 1975...
...rust belt vs...
...Last August, Rau was preferred by 52 percent over the 44 percent who found sitting Chancellor Helmut Kohl a more agreeable figure...
...They call for immediate action to reduce dependence on nuclear energy and for halting the nuclear generators, while the SPD proposes to achieve this over a ten-year period...
...Any "Green mentality" in the church appears to be a challenge to the hierarchy...
...H^^^k With almost a hundred thousand votes, •BP^^^MH their share increased by 30,000, to 10.4 percent compared with 6.8 percent in 1982...
...A pastor's son, Rau worked more than a decade for a Protestant youth magazine, eventually rising to editor...
...The results: CDU-CSU 44 percent and 49 percent...
...The SPD seeks a middle ground between the U.S...
...According to business researchers a stop in price increases — i.e., complete price stability — has been achieved...
...They are the bete noire of the small FDP, of course, born in 1980 out of concern for the environment: acid rain, air and water pollution, chemical spills and dumping, and more recently fallout from Chernobyl, new nuclear reactors, and continued presence on German soil of thousands of nuclear warheads...
...In August and again in November, the pollsters asked "Whom do you prefer now...
...Some conservatives, notably Bavaria's Strauss, called for a change in the Basic Law...
...CDU says that the SPD, and especially the Greens, are romantics who want to undo the blessings of the industrial age...
...Rau's slumped to 43 percent...
...16: Commonweal...
...strength and because of SDI...
...A proposed "Crown's Witness" law was withdrawn when it met opposition from the FDP...
...Meanwhile, the two other problems must be dealt with by political aspirants: terrorism and an influx of refugees...
...In the huge state of North Rhine Westphalia, of which he is governor, Rau is a highly successful and charismatic politician...
...When questioned about the environment, however, Cardinal Hoeffner held that as nuclear energy cannot be made 100 percent safe, it must be transcended...
...West Germany declared itself always ready to receive political refugees of any region in its 1949 Basic Law...
...Johannes Rau is at great pains to distance the SPD from any possible cooperation with the Greens...
...Foreign Minister Genscher agrees overall, but puts the case more moderately...
...They would have each side, and particularly the Federal Republic, reduce its army (presently 490,000 West Germans), In addition to strategic arms agreements and a nuclear-free corridor, the SPD has proposed reduction in the numbers of tanks and other conventional weapons on each side...
...Key issues were to be unemployment, ecology, nuclear arms and energy, and the good society...
...How will this economic accomplishment affect politics when West Germany elects a new national government on January 25, 1987...
...any media coverage...
...It was a fine result, but less than 1982's 58 percent...
...What finally brought the crisis under control, however, was the compliance of the East Germans in no longer facilitating the entry of thousands of refugees into Berlin...
...It is, moreover, a generally admired, progressive, and influential force...
Vol. 114 • January 1987 • No. 1
