It took a mere 14 months for Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to tumble from the top of German politics and lose her chance to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor. But the downfall of Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer is symptomatic of more profound ailments in the German party political system.
The proximate cause of her resignation on Monday as leader of the ruling Christian Democrats was her inability to exert control over local CDU politicians in the small eastern state of Thuringia. They colluded last week with the rightwing nationalist Alternative for Germany party in electing Thuringia’s premier, thereby breaking a taboo on co-operating with the radical right which had held since the formation of the democratic West German state in 1949.
The public backlash against the Thuringian CDU’s action was immediate and intense. Far from representing a genuine breakthrough for the AfD, the unsavoury episode actually demonstrated that a majority of German society — at least, in the west — wants the taboo on collaboration with the extreme right to be applied resolutely and unconditionally.
In this sense, Germany remains a long way from travelling down the road of neighbouring Austria, where the far-right Freedom party was brought into a coalition government at national level after elections in 2017. It shared power for 18 months before its disreputable behaviour forced the party out of office.
There were other factors behind Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s fall from grace. She committed public relations and policy blunders that damaged her standing with German voters, stimulated internal dissent in the CDU and made it increasingly doubtful that she would be selected as the party’s candidate for chancellor in the next Bundestag elections, due by September 2021.
Even Ms Merkel’s decision in July to promote Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer to defence minister could not stop the CDU sharks from circling around their new leader. Running the defence ministry is at the best of times a thankless task for German politicians, but the chief gripe of her critics was that she was jeopardising the CDU’s chances of remaining the dominant party after the next elections.
This illustrates that the fundamental cause of the collapse of her authority lies in the reshaping and fragmentation of Germany’s party landscape in the Merkel era. In the 2017 Bundestag elections, the CDU and the Social Democrats, their coalition partners, each scored their lowest national vote since the end of Nazism.
What used to be a three-party system, involving the CDU, SPD and liberal Free Democrats, evolved after the 1980s into a four-party system with the rise of the Greens. Then it became a five-party system with the emergence of Die Linke, a leftist party with roots in former East Germany’s communist dictatorship.
Finally, after the AfD’s birth in 2013 and entry into the Bundestag in 2017, the system has six parties — or seven, if one counts the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, separately. This splintering has made the formation of stable coalition governments an ever more awkward task, one rendered no easier by the four mainstream parties’ refusal to consider governing at national level with either Die Linke or the AfD.
The Thuringia debacle will add to these complications by intensifying suspicions of the Free Democrats, who were as guilty as the CDU, if not more so, in effectively lifting the taboo on the AfD. No less important, the prospect of a CDU-Green partnership will be clouded by the Greens’ doubts about whether the CDU can be trusted to maintain the ironclad isolation of the radical right in regional German politics.
The effect of these ructions is not to undermine the integrity of German democracy, but rather to raise questions about the effectiveness of Germany’s role in Europe and the wider global arena. As the old international order erodes, Germany is being shaken by short-term political convulsions and longer-term structural changes that hold it back just when its leadership is most needed.
FREDERICTON – A look at David Coon, leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick:
Born: Oct. 28, 1956.
Early years: Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, he spent about three decades as an environmental advocate.
Education: A trained biologist, he graduated with a bachelor of science from McGill University in Montreal in 1978.
Family: He and his wife Janice Harvey have two daughters, Caroline and Laura.
Before politics: Worked as an environmental educator, organizer, activist and manager for 33 years, mainly with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.
Politics: Joined the Green Party of Canada in May 2006 and was elected leader of the New Brunswick Green Party in September 2012. Won a seat in the legislature in 2014 — a first for the province’s Greens.
Quote: “It was despicable. He’s clearly decided to take the low road in this campaign, to adopt some Trump-lite fearmongering.” — David Coon on Sept. 12, 2024, reacting to Blaine Higgs’s claim that the federal government had decided to send 4,600 asylum seekers to New Brunswick.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A look at Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.
Born: March 1, 1954.
Early years: The son of a customs officer, he grew up in Forest City, N.B., near the Canada-U.S. border.
Education: Graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.
Family: Married his high-school sweetheart, Marcia, and settled in Saint John, N.B., where they had four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.
Before politics: Hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from university and was eventually promoted to director of distribution. Worked for 33 years at the company.
Politics: Elected to the legislature in 2010 and later served as finance minister under former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward. Elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.
Quote: “I’ve always felt parents should play the main role in raising children. No one is denying gender diversity is real. But we need to figure out how to manage it.” — Blaine Higgs in a year-end interview in 2023, explaining changes to school policies about gender identity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – The pressing issues of climate change and food security join more familiar ones like violent extremism and espionage on a new list of Canada’s intelligence priorities.
The federal government says publishing the list of priorities for the first time is an important step toward greater transparency.
The government revises the priorities every two years, based on recommendations from the national security adviser and the intelligence community.
Once the priorities are reviewed and approved by the federal cabinet, key ministers issue directives to federal agencies that produce intelligence.
Among the priorities are the security of global health, food, water and biodiversity, as well as the issues of climate change and global sustainability.
The new list also includes foreign interference and malign influence, cyberthreats, infrastructure security, Arctic sovereignty, border integrity and transnational organized crime.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
