In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the governing Social Democrat (SPD)s got whipped, to the tune of a 10 percent drop at the polls. In Berlin, by contrast, the SPD picked up 1.1 percent, received the most votes of any party, and now has the option of continuing its coalition with the Left (PDS) or forming a new one with the Greens. (Behind the SPD, the big winners in Berlin were the Greens — up to 13.1 percent from 9.1 percent — and “other” — parties that did not top the 5-percent hurdle collectively accounted for 13.8 percent of the vote.) Like its northern neighbor, Berlin has high unemployment. It also has a crushing debt that is slowly being worked out through budget consolidation and deals with the national government. It also still has lingering constraints from the old days (personnel appointed for life, pensions for former GDR bureaucrats, possibly some remaining double institutions). In short, economically Berlin is the kind of place that turfs out governments on a regular basis, particularly given voter volatility in postcommunist societies. Yet, the SPD-led government was not only re-elected, its share of votes even increased modestly. Why?
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Author Archives: Doug Merrill
Sandy Brown Baltic Shores
Sweden wasn’t the only Baltic area with an election yesterday. The voters of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in Germany’s northeastern corner, dealt a heavy blow to the ruling Social Democrat-postcommunist (SPD-Left) coalition. The SPD dropped 10 percent, but still received the largest share of votes, topping the Christian Democrats (CDU) 30.2 percent to 28.8 percent. The postcommunist (or possibly post-postcommunist, depending on how you look at these things) party, now known as the Left, rose marginally from 16.4 percent to 16.8 percent. The SPD can either attempt to continue the current coalition, which would then have a one-seat majority, or it can try to forge a grand coalition with the CDU, with all of the pluses and minuses currently on display at the national level.
But relatively mundane state politics are not what today’s headlines are about.
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Swedish Tidbits
Nobody has stepped up to write a big piece for us on the Swedish election, which is bound to be close, but below the fold are a few potential topics from our internal discussion. Bullet points for that party conversation you’re bound to have this weekend about the election in Sweden. (And if anyone from the afoe team does write a post, or objects to publishing the bits, feel free to take this post down.)
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Risk Premium
Think that guaranteeing depositors’ money is a dull topic? In Russia, it’s exciting enough to get the central bank’s first deputy chairman gunned down on the way from a recreational soccer game to his armored Mercedes. It’s the highest-level assassination since President Putin took office.
Andrei Kozlov, 41, was the Central Bank of Russia‘s number two official, and had spearheaded banking reform on many fronts. Just this year, he had overseen the closure of 44 banks that were accused of improprieties. He was also at the forefront of deciding which banks could purchase deposit insurance (dubiously financed institutions could not), and he was pushing to make such insurance mandatory, as I understand it is in almost every advanced economy.
In working to bring Russia into line with international standards, Kozlov made a lot of enemies. Contract killings in Moscow are almost never solved.
An Impertinent Question
In 1979, Pope John Paul II traveled to his homeland, Poland, a visit that played a role in ending one-party rule. This weekend, Pope Benedict XVI will visit his homeland, Bavaria, where one political party has ruled for more than forty years. My impertinent query: Is Minister-President Stoiber making a mistake in welcoming the Pope?
Terror Plot in Britain
Scotland Yard gets their man. Or in this case, at least 25 21.
Plots to blow up numerous planes en route from UK to US; Heathrow closed to incoming flights; numerous airlines cancelling flights; carry-on luggage effectively banned right now on UK flights; MI5 says threat is ‘critical.’ Glad my fishin’ trip doesn’t involve Britain just now.
A terrorist plot to blow up planes in mid-flight from the UK to the US has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled on to as many as 10 aircraft in hand luggage.
Obviously still developing.
Gone Fishin’
Not that I’ve been all that prolific lately (having lots of work is better than the alternative, but it does cut into the blogging), but I’ll wrap two big projects this week and then head off for two weeks of fishing bicycling in Switzerland.
Mostly downhill, of course.
Meanwhile in an EU Candidate State
From Lebanon’s Daily Star:
Turkey on Monday appointed a general who is expected to adopt a tougher line toward EU negotiations to replace the head the country’s powerful military, who was widely considered a moderate. The change in leadership, which was widely anticipated, comes as Turkey is insisting that Washington do more to crack down on Turkish Kurdish rebels operating out of bases in northern Iraq…
Buyukanit raised eyebrows this year by praising a soldier subsequently jailed for a bombing believed to be aimed at stirring up unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast. The bombing triggered riots in the region and a parliamentary inquiry.
Analysts say Buyukanit’s no-nonsense views have been shaped by the time he spent in the southeast during the 1990s, heyday of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which is now seen as weakened but far from defeated.
“Buyukanit is more pro-American, more security-minded than Ozkok. He is not against the Europeanization of Turkey but he is more influenced by nationalist tendencies,” said Hussein Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.
“He will be much tougher in the fight against the PKK.”
Hmm…
Security-minded is what one would usually expect a general to be, but the key question will be how broadly he defines the interests of Turkish society. Has he kept up with changes, or will he try to turn the clock back?
I’m not at all sure that “no-nonsense” is the proper way to describe someone who advocates purely military solutions to Kurdish issues in Turkey. In fact, that view is full of nonsense, as much of the 1980s and 1990s demonstrate.
And just what a “tougher line toward the EU” means is another question. The EU line (and the NATO line, for that matter) is that civilian governments control the national military, full stop. The fact that the political views of a Turkish general are a matter of interest is itself a sign of the distance still to go for Turkey. Questions like this are a normal part of accession — Greece’s military junta ended its rule just seven years before that country joined the EC; there were worries early on about Poland’s military (a legacy of Col. Pilsudski in the inter-war era); Spain and Portugal probably had to address the issue as well, given Franco and Salazar.
Bears watching.
Mr Commitment
Mike Gayle is a British novelist. He writes books that, if you were feeling snarky, you might call chick-lit that guys can read too. Less snarkily, he writes light contemporary drama. I’ll admit to a small weakness for the genre, at least in its British variant. Although the plots are wildly predictable, the details of melodrama in a separated-by-common-language culture fascinate me. Plus Gayle is good with dialogue and doesn’t go for cheap ploys.
And there’s another thing: Gayle’s black. As are his characters. Or at least they might be, though I had to admit I did not picture them as black at first. He chooses not to make much use of physical description, so it seems clear that he’s at the very least quite aware of the ambiguity he’s creating. On the other hand, I wonder if there aren’t subtler cues–neighborhoods where the characters live, other parts of their background–that would tip off British readers. Anyone else have this experience? Or more broadly, what would tip you off that a London-based character was black, without being a physical description or too much of a stereotype?
Mr Potato Head
Sometime during the group phase of the last World Cup, a lefty German newspaper, the Berlin-based taz, compared Poland’s current president to a potato. I’m sure that there was more to it than that, but the original version has disappeared into pay-per-view is here, and my reading knowledge of Polish isn’t what it was a decade ago. If yours is better, there’s a Polish version is here, do let me know.
Anyway, the satire was part of a series called “Rogues Who Want to Change the World,” and Kaczynski was in there with other figures you’d expect from an alternative daily, including Chancellor Merkel and German President Köhler. Whether the comparison was apt in Kaczynski’s case will be left as an exercise for readers.
I would think that the occasional irritating comparison is part of the price of being president, and you’d probably think the same, but maybe that’s why Mr Kaczynski is president of Poland and we’re not. Plus the matter of being Polish. Because being president means that there’s a law that says insulting you is a crime. Up to two years in the Polski pen, and Warsaw prosecutors are, even as I write this, investigating whether to take out an EU arrest warrant for the Berlin-based satirists. The smart money is on no, but smart has not exactly been the controlling adjective in what has the makings of a good silly-season story. (Quite a number of European states have these “don’t insult the president/state/ruling house/whatever laws,” and they are usually defended with the assertion that they are never used. Well.)
Godwin’s law, of course, has long since been violated, by Poland’s foreign minister no less. The president skipped a meeting with German and French leaders just before they went to the G-8 summit, though he quickly denied any connection with the satire. Said he had stomach trouble. Not due to tubers, surely. And the new prime minister, not coincidentally the president’s twin brother, saw no need to change course. “We haven’t insulted anybody.”
On the other hand, amidst all the foolishness, President Kaczynski did manage a cruel blow. He said, according to the weekly Zeit, “even in the history of this peculiar newspaper” the potato portrait was an unprecedented insult of a foreign head of state and a criminal act. If in thirty-plus years of lefty alternativeness, the taz has never done anything more tasteless than call a jumped-up szlachta a lumpen-potato, they have seriously missed out on one of the perks of being lefty and alternative. I think Kaczynski’s been clever here and cast aspersions on their capabilitieis as caricaturists and satirists. But for all I know, these aspersions will harm their business and professional reputations. Maybe the taz should consider a counter-suit?