No Trust for this Man

Chancellor Scholz is asking for, begging for, a defeat in today's confidence vote in the Bundestag. He ran the ship aground by firing his coalition partner and there is no way forward, he thinks.

This week is the last before the traditional Christmas break in many national parliaments. It usually lasts till over New Year so it’s also the last chance to settle any open business of the year 2024. In Germany, the final battle of the year is over dissolving the ‘Ampel’ or traffic light coalition government of Olaf Scholz. He has already fired hos finance minister and thus dismissed one of the three partners, blowing out the yellow light (Liberal-conservatives) in the middle of the Ampel.

Scholz is of course aware that Germany cannot be governed with just red and green, the red symbolizing Scholz’s Social Democrats and green symbolizing - the Green Party, you guessed it.

Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, campaign photo by Nils Leon Brauer

Today, Monday 16, is the day of the confidence vote in parliament. In principle, the vote can go both ways. If so happened that the vote shows trust in the Ampel rather than the expected rejection, Scholz would have to soldier on with an amputated government that he absolutely does not want. Scholz wants elections, but he needs a no-confidence majority for that.

That’s why today’s news bulletins comes out with headlines such as ‘please do not trust this man’, meaning please vote no confidence for Scholz so we can get on with out lives and avoid another stale political period without initiatives and without solutions. One of the tricky parts is that the some parliamentarians from the far-right party AfD might vote for, not against, Scholz, thus preventing the new elections. The newspaper Bild writes:

AfD party leader Alice Weidel (45) announced this morning that three AfD MPs will vote for Scholz. She did not name any names. Suddenly, individual AfD MPs want to explicitly express their confidence in Scholz and thus prevent early elections! The logic of these AfD MPs: They think the Union candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz (69, CDU), who is leading in the polls, is even worse, and want early new elections and to delay his appointment as chancellor. The reason: The AfD politicians fear that Chancellor Merz will lead to more arms deliveries to Ukraine, among other things.

But: The AfD parliamentary group has a total of 76 MPs, the majority of whom are expected to withdraw their confidence in Scholz. The AfD's parliamentary manager, Bernd Baumann, told the broadcasting group "ProSieben/Sat.1" last week that there were only "a few, very few" AfD MPs who wanted to vote for Scholz.

AfD parliamentary group vice-chair Beatrix von Storch (53), said the AfD "under no circumstances" trusts the Chancellor. "We have argued against this the whole time. We have been working to ensure that this chancellorship comes to an end the whole time," said von Storch in a podcast by the magazine "Politico".

A good example why other political parties reject collaboration with AfD. Besides they are stone hard right-wingers and supporters of Russia, some of them are troublemakers or ‘Chaoten’ as the German say, chaos-slingers. More about reactions to anti-democratic AfD members in the earlier post:

The political situation is complicated for the Ampel-parties, because they are losing terrain both to the right and extreme right. 325 out of 736

At the last election in September 2021, the Ampel achieved enough votes to form a coalition of majority government. SPD, Grüne and FDP together had 51.5% of the votes. By the latest prognoses, this looks to run way down into something more like 33%. (Figures from government site Wahlrecht-Umfragen).

The conservative union CDU/CSU has benefited most, although also other on the right. CDU/CSU are up from 24.1% to around 30%, and are deemed the most likely to form a new government. However, that needs still to be a coalition as minority governments are not commonplace in Germany. Potential coalition partners are either from the just defeated government or from the far right. It is difficult to step directly from one coalition to another, the opposition. Perhaps FDP can do it, but they count only 5% of the votes, as per prognosis. That leaves the far right AfD and BSW, which are currently unpalatable for any of the established parties.

In then local elections earlier this year, the right wing parties moved strongly ahead in the eastern Länder. Some of those have not yet been able to form governments. See the earlier post on those elections:

Perhaps Germany would actually be better off with trusting incumbent Ampel-coalition for the remainder of the period until regular elections are due next September. Not necessarily Scholz as Chancellor, but a new head of government supported by the same Ampel-parties. An obvious candidate is foreign minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green party. She has done well in the role and does not suffer from the ambiguous Scholtz messaging about Ukraine. Recently, she stated that she does not rule out German troops in Ukraine. She would need to push for change with migration, Ukraine and EU policies, while coming up with something positive for the industrial potholes that Germany is sinking into. Admittedly a tall order, but also a chance to pull voters away from the far right, which all other parties agree on the need for.

After the elections, the conservative CDU chair Friedrich Merz is the most likely candidate for Chancellor, given the current polls. However, putting together a majority will be his first, daunting task, under circumstances.