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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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 Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 3:30 pm Post subject: German elections |
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Merkel optimistic as Germans head to the polls
| Quote: | Germans voted in a national election Sunday with Angela Merkel favourite to win a new mandate to drag Europe's top economy out of recession and as the country agonises over its role in Afghanistan.
Final polls indicated the conservative Merkel was near certain to secure four more years as chancellor, but her hopes of forming a new centre-right coalition with a business-friendly party hung by a thread.
Heightened security after warnings from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other Islamic militants over Germany's increasingly bloody mission in Afghanistan also cast a shadow over voting.
Merkel wants to dump the Social Democrats (SPD), her current "grand coalition" partners, for an alliance with the Free Democrats (FDP) that she says is needed to pull Germany out of its worst downturn in 60 years.
But her Christian Democrat party's lead has fallen in the final weeks of the campaign. A Forsa survey on Friday put her preferred coalition on 47 percent of the vote, which experts say may not be enough to form a government.
The most likely alternative would be another grand coalition.
Nevertheless, Merkel, Forbes magazine's most powerful woman on the planet for the past four years, said she was confident of putting together the alliance she wants.
"I am always optimistic," she told the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper. |
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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| Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:05 am Post subject: |
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Merkel wins as Germans choose centre-right; Social Democrats out
| Quote: | German voters gave Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term on Sunday and a mandate to partner with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) in a government that will rein in the role of the state in Europe's largest economy.
Merkel, 55, has ruled for the past four years in a "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), an awkward partnership of traditional rivals.
The election result frees her from the shackles of that marriage of convenience, allowing her to form the center-right government she has argued is best placed to nurture Germany back to health after its worst recession in the post-war era.
[...]
The next government faces major economic challenges. It will have to get a surging budget deficit under control, cope with rising unemployment and ward off a credit crunch as fragile banks rein in lending.
Together with the FDP, Merkel is expected to look for opportunities to reduce taxes, sell off state holdings in companies like rail operator Deutsche Bahn, and reverse an SPD-orchestrated phase-out of Germany's nuclear power plants.
But the partners, which last ruled Germany between 1982 and 1998 when Helmut Kohl was chancellor, will also have to overcome differences on the size and timing of tax cuts in tough coalition talks over the coming weeks. |
more @ link
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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TS.
Delicious schadenfreude
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 14585
Location: Toronto, ON
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| Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:35 am Post subject: |
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It's worth noting that the CDU/CSU/FDP coalition will wield a narrow majority. Between the three parties, they managed a total of 48% of the vote compared to about 45% for the combined SDP, Left and Greens. The rest of the vote was comprised of small parties which didn't hit the threshold to enter the Bundestag under the MMP system.
The standings in the next Bundestag will be:
CDU: 194 (+14)
SDP: 146 (-76)
FDP: 93 (+32)
Left: 76 (+22)
Alliance '90/The Greens: 68 (+17)
CSU: 45 (-1)
Governing coalition:
CDU/CSU + FDP: 332 compared to 290 for opposition parties (SDP, Left, Alliance '90/The Greens)
A fun note, the German Pirate Party managed to gather about 900 000 votes, or about 2%.
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"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson |
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Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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| Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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Merkel to name gay foreign minister
| Quote: | With the re-election of Angela Merkel as chancellor, it appears that Germany will get its first openly gay foreign minister in Guido Westerwelle. The German press is eating it up.
| Quote: | | Guido Westerwelle and his gay partner are Germany's new "power couple" — at least according to the nation's leading daily, which splashed a photo of the pair hugging on election night on the front-page above the fold in Tuesday's paper. The ringing endorsement for the 47-year-old Westerwelle, who is widely expected to be tapped for the high-profile post of foreign minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government, in the Bild daily also highlighted his personal life in a way he rarely has. "His man makes him so strong," Bild wrote about Westerwelle, declaring that his 42-year-old partner Michael Mronz was not only his most important adviser during the campaign, but also "gives him security and ... supports him when he suffers a setback." Despite eight years as leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, Westerwelle's homosexuality has generated relatively little discussion. But with his party set to become kingmaker to Chancellor Merkel's conservatives and him foreign minister, it has been thrust into the spotlight. |
Westerwelle and his partner, an events manager, have been together for six years. Germany's LGBT activists say that in his role as foreign minister, they will demand that Westerwelle advocate for the rights of gays in other countries. |
Big deal... CANADA'S right-wing-crazy party has had a queer Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities for just *ages* now...
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:43 am Post subject: |
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Merkel's coalition defeated at state level:
| Quote: | Germany's anti-nuclear Green Party has scored a remarkable state election victory, dealing a blow to the party of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, according to preliminary poll results.
The Greens won 24.2 per cent in wealthy Baden-Wuerttemberg state while the Social Democracts (SPD) finished at 23.2 per cent, meaning Greens state leader Winfried Kretschmann will lead a Greens-SPD state government.
"This is a day that has strongly changed the political landscape in Germany," Claudia Roth, the Greens party chairwoman, said in Berlin.
Losing Baden-Wuerttemberg, which lies on the French and Swiss borders and is home to car makers Daimler and Porsche, would weaken Merkel''s grip on her party and make it even harder for her to pass legislation in the upper house of parliament. |
More background:
| Quote: | Members of one party, however, may be sitting on the edges of their seats as they follow the ballot box results both there and in Baden-Württemberg, which also votes on Sunday: the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). The party is Merkel's junior coalition partner in Berlin and is led by Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. And Sunday could determine both his and his party's future. If the FDP does not receive the 5 percent necessary for parliamentary representation in one or both of those states, Westerwelle could soon be demoted.
There is plenty of reason for worry. Since nationwide elections in the autumn of 2009, when the FDP received 14.6 percent of the vote, its best-ever result, the party has experienced the kind of electoral meltdown seldom seen in German politics. In recent months, surveys have found that merely one in 20 German voters is prepared to support the party. The numbers are no better in the two states set to cast their ballots this weekend. |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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