Germany’s FDP: The kingmaker is preparing to return
September’s general election could well radically redraw Germany’s political map, and at least one party is hoping it will restore its lost power: the free-market-loving, socially liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), once a long-term fixture in the German government mostly as a junior partner to the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).
The way current opinion polls are shaping up, it looks almost certain that the current “grand” coalition of CDU and SPD will not be able to keep their centrist boat afloat in the next legislative period — especially without the ever-popular Captain Merkel at the helm, as the chancellor has ruled out running for a fifth chancellorship.
The FDP is polling comfortably above 10%
No more dominant parties
That has opened up heady opportunities for other parties, especially the Greens. But the Free Democrats, polling at between 10%-12% at the moment, are also eying Germany’s new, flatter political landscape with a keen interest: If even a CDU/Green coalition might not gather enough Bundestag seats for a majority, there are three plausible three-way coalitions that could include a kingmaker FDP: A coalition with the CDU/CSU and the Greens is seen as the most likely, but also a coalition with the SPD and the Greens or a coalition with the CDU and the SPD could be viable options.
As it happens, the FDP itself scuppered the chance to form a coalition with the CDU/CSU and Greens after the 2017 election: Following four weeks of tortuous negotiations in late autumn of that year, FDP leader Christian Lindner walked out, unilaterally declaring that they had failed with a memorable phrase: “It’s better not to govern at all than to govern wrongly.” The move surprised many at the time, not least the disappointed leaders of the other parties.
What does the FDP want?
Some saw Lindner’s decision as a tactical mistake, a backfiring attempt at making populist, anti-mainstream statements in an atmosphere where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had made electoral inroads. But in the context of the FDP’s recent past, it also made sense: The previous election in 2013 had been a calamity for the FDP, as they failed to reach the 5%-mark nationally and so lost all their Bundestag seats for the first time since its foundation in 1948.
That had been put down to what was perceived as the weak leadership of Lindner’s predecessor, former vice-chancellor, and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler.
Vietnamese-born Philip Rösler was FDP chairman from 2011 to 2013
Lindner’s leadership since 2013 has been marked by a more aggressive approach: A spiky speaker in parliament, the 42-year-old has developed a taste for opposition, vehemently criticizing the grand coalition’s policy on virtually every issue: In the past year, that has meant countering the government’s coronavirus measures.
As Lindner put it in a speech to a party conference last weekend, the FDP would “always search for milder alternatives to blanket lockdowns.” And “The pandemic has proved that when it comes to citizens’ rights, you can rely on the Free Democrats. … This extraordinary situation has deformed liberalism in our country.”
That might have been taken as an attempt to appeal to the anti-lockdown sentiment among a grassroots minority, but it is also very much in line with the FDP’s founding principles — curbing the power of the state.
FDP patriarch Hans-Dietrich Genscher served some 18 years as Germany’s foreign minister — playing a major role in the country’s reunification in 1990
The electoral failure in 2013 was a real shock because the FDP had long since established itself as an integral part of the German political establishment. Rooted in Germany’s 19th-century democratic revolutions, it saw itself as the natural guardian of the German people’s constitutional rights: The nation’s first post-war president, who must sign all legislation into law, was Theodor Heuss, the FDP’s founding chairman, the German head of state from 1949 to 1959.
Though always a relatively small party, up until 2014, it was the party that had spent the longest in the (West) German government, its longevity most embodied by FDP patriarch Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was born in East Germany but later spent some 18 years as Germany’s foreign minister, first under SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
FDP chairman Guido Westerwelle was often criticized for what was seen as overblowen and garish election campaigning
Every other FDP leader since then has been under Genscher’s shadow – not least Merkel’s own foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who led the party to a strong 14.6% finish at the 2009 election — though only after he fronted a widely derided “Project 18,” which vowed to capture 18% of German voters at the 2002 election (when it won 7.4%).
Project 18 also illustrated how the FDP, despite its ambitions as a party of statesmanship, has also been prone to pratfalls. For every historic figure like Genscher, there has also been a Jürgen Möllemann, FDP’s vice-chancellor and Economy Minister under Helmut Kohl, who was forced to resign in the so-called “letterhead scandal” of 1992: It emerged he had used official Economy Ministry letters to promote his wife’s cousin’s plastic chip deposit business to supermarket chains. Möllemann died in a parachuting accident in 2003 in what some believe was a suicide.
Jürgen Möllemann (l) was one of the most controversial figures in the FDP
A new, more radical manifesto
The FDP ship has steadied since then, placing many respected ministers and concentrating on its core values: Liberalism on both the economy and on social values. It is in favor of restricting unemployment benefits, expanding equal rights for same-sex couples, expanding educational opportunities, and ensuring personal data is protected.
Personal freedom, and restricting the power of the state, have been the party’s guiding principles: At last weekend’s party conference, the party took a radical course on Germany’s wide range of public broadcasters, which it now wants to reduce to news programs and fact-based documentaries, eliminating a number of stations altogether. Much of this goes with a drum that the FDP has been banging for several years: Vote them in, Lindner has promised, and the FDP will accelerate Germany’s sluggish digitalization drive.
The FDP has been struggling to attract female voters, so many have high hopes for 29-year old candidate Ria Schröder
The FDP’s new manifesto reflects a trend within its policies: Its natural voters are the same as the Green party’s – younger, politically centrist professionals living in cities, unmoored both from the traditional working-class voter base of the SPD and the traditional white Christian voter base of the CDU. But unlike the Greens, for whom gender equality and diversity are core values, the FDP has been criticized for not diversifying its white, male image.
But the party has struck out in a markedly different direction in recent years. It was a trend that began under Lindner during the refugee crisis of 2016 when the FDP turned more conservative than Merkel on immigration.
Lindner’s personal popularity in the FDP remains unchallenged, but whether he comes out as tactically astute will remain to be seen in September.
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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-s-fdp-the-kingmaker-is-preparing-to-return/a-57559569?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf