Let the Race Begin

Today in Germany, CDU party president Angela Merkel was officially chosen to be the party candidate and thus will run against current Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in upcoming elections predicted to be on or around September 18, 2005. Edmund Stoiber, (pictured right of Merkel), president of the CSU, the sister party of the CDU that exists in Bavaria, ran and lost against Schröder in the past elections and has this time thrown his support behind Merkel saying she “has the full confidence” of both parties.

Should Merkel win this Fall, she’d be the first women to run Germany since Theophanu in 983 AD. While politically she has excellent chances, there are a few other factors working against her. First and foremost, she is a woman and although Germany is a free country with equal rights for women, they are still vastly underrepresented in politics and in business. Secondly, she grew up in the DDR or East Germany and while this doesn’t cause a concrete problem for her, it does tend to foster some mistrust or at the very least discomfort among some Germans. Given the SPD’s huge lack of support among most people, most undecided voters and centrist elements in the SPD are expected to turn out for the CDU/CSU. In Germany, the Bundezkanzler, or Chancellor is not elected by the people but rather by the party which is elected, though as you’ve read, they choose their candidate for Chancellor beforehand.

Chancellor Schröder hopes that the Bundestag’s vote of no confidence occurs no later then July 1st which would clear the way for its dissolution by July 21st. Until then, the lesser parties are scrambling to not be left out, especially the Greens.

In a related and rather unsettling development, the National Democratic Party (NPD) and the German Peoples Union (DVU) have announced that they will run on a common platform and could garner enough vote to finally enter the Bundestag, a true nightmare for most Germans as they represent the far right and tend to make thinly veiled references to the late German Empire and Third Reich which borders on illegal. In 2003, they were brought before the Bundesverfassungsgericht, or German Constitutional Court, and almost banned. There has been talk of another attempt by Schröder however as he already has a full plate, it’s unlikely to happen as their chances of success aren’t much greater today.