The idea appears to be letting the AfD get into power and make a mess of things and a fool of themselves at the same time.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
How to cope. The question people have to answer more or less on a daily basis. True to an even greater extent in politics. Just take a look.
Trump must cope with Trump. The world must cope with Trump.
The United Nations must cope with the World. Sane people must cope with idiots, regardless of nationality, religion or upbringing.
After the devastating results of the elections in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU under Mr. Merz have to cope too. They have another problem in Mecklenburg – West Pomerania, where they got kicked out of the State Parliament with under 5%. How to go about it.
The aim in Saxony-Anhalt is how to keep the AfD, as winners of the election, out of the government.
The German system allows coalitions. Even when coalitions are formed by the losers of the same said election. The idea being as all the parties were elected into the State Parliament and, according to the majority principal, all can in one way or another form the government. The basic argument is the most votes were divided amongst the established parties and not given to the radical right-wing election winners. So off they (the others, the good guys) go.
So, a few options are available, just remember the goal is to keep the AfD away from power.
The SPD invited all the “decent-” democratically-minded parties, including the BSW to discuss a coalition to address this problem. All these parties agreed to talks except, believe it or not, the CDU. They stated publicly that they would go and be part of the opposition. This implies, no matter what the result of the talks turns out, there are not enough seats to form an anti-AfD government.
The BSW are going to have additional talks with the AfD but not about forming a coalition, which would allow the AfD to rule in the state with the necessary majority. The idea behind the BSW is to find common ground to support the mutual ideas stated in the pre-election policy papers.
These cover affordable energy, infrastructure and peace efforts, including a new policy vis-a-vis Russia. And an anti-militarisation posture.
The BSW would then vote with or against the (thus) ruling AfD on the merit of the plans up for debate. The side effect would be not being directly involved in mutual policy and ideological stand-points, which would jeopardise their attraction to voters in the coming state elections next year. No matter how the media like to paint them, the BSW are not a right-wing party. This distance must be kept visible at all costs.
The SPD, trying to fight their way back into voters’ favour, obviously want to run the state government, with no matter how many coalition partners. This is vital to their optical position as partner in the national, coalition government. It has the only option to achieve this in Saxony-Anhalt by clobbering together a multi-party coalition, regardless of political policy and campaign rhetoric. And regardless of the wishes of their own voters. Things like this make one wonder how different the political positions really are when it comes down to getting into power.
The CDU are, by the look of things trying to play a clever game. They seem to have realised allowing the AfD to play the victim card, thanks to constant vilification and calls for legal measures to ban the party outright has not helped, either to keep the party down or win over more voters.
So the idea appears to be letting the AfD get into power and make a mess of things and a fool of themselves at the same time. In addition to reaping the benefits with the upcoming spring elections looming on the horizon, they will allow the BSW to walk into the same trap as the AfD, helping them mess things up. AfD and BSW, as basically the only real alternative political movements in Germany will be bunched together as extremist and incompetent parties, capable only of harming the states they govern and Germany in the long run.
Germany is in for troubled times, not due to the political situation in parts of the world but due to its own inability to reach independent decisions and come up with and follow a sovereign political policy for the good of its own population.
