BERLIN: The gloves came off between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and her Free Democratic (FDP) allies as Germany’s nervous ruling coalition partners fight for the same centre-right voters ahead of Sunday’s general election.
Merkel appealed to supporters to cast both their votes — one for a constituency member of parliament, one for a party list — for her Christian Democrats (CDU) rather than splitting their ticket to help the FDP in an increasingly close race.
“The CDU can’t afford to give away any votes,” Merkel said at a rally in Potsdam on Monday evening. “Everyone is fighting for themselves. We are two separate parties.”
Economically free-marketeering and socially libertarian, the FDP has served in most German governments since 1949, with such influence that it has been dubbed the tail that wags the dog.
But the small liberal party’s survival in the national parliament is in doubt after it crashed out of the Bavarian state assembly in an election last Sunday, falling well short of the 5 percent required to win seats.
Yet far from offering their allies a helping hand, the conservatives have stepped up their campaign for both votes, haunted by a shock defeat in a Lower Saxony state election in January, when the FDP successfully siphoned off CDU support.
Under Germany’s complex proportional voting system, first votes select candidates for the Bundestag Lower House and second votes determine how the seats are distributed there.
In past elections, a tactical second vote for the FDP has helped it clear the 5 percent hurdle and preserve a centre-right coalition.
Now the CDU is trying to stamp out the practice, not least because it faces another challenge from an anti-euro party, the Alliance for Germany, which could also grab conservative votes. If the centre-right option fails, the CDU will need as many votes as possible to enter ‘grand coalition’ talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) from a strong negotiating position. Reuters
