Germany: Some further observations on the federal state elections in Thuringia and Saxony
We publish an unofficial translation of an article by Dem Volke Dienen:
As previously announced, we would like to provide some further comments on the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony:
While most of the newspapers after the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday were already headlined “earthquake” and “caesura”, the incumbent Prime Minister of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke), whose party made a minus of 17.9 percent in its last stronghold – compared to the last elections, a loss of almost 60 percent – spoke of a “celebration of democracy” in view of the voter turnout.
In fact, Saxony achieved the highest turnout since the annexation of the GDR by the FRG and Thuringia the second highest turnout since then; in both federal states, almost three quarters of those eligible to vote did vote according to the official figures. With the election winners at just under a third of the votes cast in each case, this means that the non-voters who reject bourgeois parliamentarianism are once again the strongest party, although this time there was again an enormous choice from “far left” (of the bourgeois party spectrum) by the MLPD to “far right” by the Free Saxons, as well as weeks of Germany-wide media theater, especially around the danger posed by Björn Höcke and the declaration of a “decisive election”. So for a large proportion of people in the country, it is not a question of what is on the ballot, but of rejecting the system as such.
Those who have decided to go to the polls this year, unlike last time, have done so first and foremost to express their dissatisfaction with the federal government. This is shown by the downright disastrous performance of the socalled “Ampel” parties: The SPD results at a weak single-digit result in both states. The “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance” (BSW), which could develop into the new “bourgeois workers’ party” that German imperialism so urgently needs, and already left far behind the old Social Democratic Party, which only became the strongest force in its founding city of Gotha out of 1,009 municipalities participating in the elections.
The Greens no longer made it into the Thuringian state parliament and only just managed to enter parliament in Dresden. The situation is even more bitter for the FDP [translators note: the liberals], which has been completely relegated to the “Other” category in both federal states. With 1.1 percent, it is roughly on a par with the Animal Protection Party in Thuringia, while in Saxony, with 0.9 percent, it is not even half as successful as the small fascist party “Freie Sachsen”.
The “Ampel coalition”, the government, is the current leadership of German imperialism and is responsible for enforcing the interests of German imperialism against the people – in times of severe crisis. The election results in Thuringia and Saxony thus very clearly express the rejection of the system in general and in particular of its current leadership by the masses, also in terms of the elected parties. On the one hand, it is interesting to look at the estimates of “voter migration”, which underline how many non-voters are brought back to the polls by the AfD as a “movement against the government”.
On the other hand, it must also be emphasized that the AfD did not win the election in Saxony and that the fear of a “fascist takeover”, which has been fueled from all sides, has certainly not come true. The AfD had also won the European elections in Saxony by a large margin ahead of the CDU, and although their shares in the state elections are almost identical, the CDU’s ratings have risen significantly. For the majority of the masses who went to vote, it is not important to cast a vote for a party, but to cast a vote against the government.
Although the CDU is part of the “united government” (almost all parties in the Bundestag and in the federal State governments, (yet) with the exception of the AfD and BSW), it was still able to create a lot of sentiment against the “Ampel” (and thus also win many non-voters in Saxony). The AfD will not be able to maintain its role as the only “alternative”, as a protest party against the federal government in the long term, if it does not manage to achieve success, i.e. get into a federal State government.
In Saxony, the CDU will form the government anyway, and in Thuringia Höcke is obviously lonesome, i.e. the AfD will by all probability not come into government there, even if the so-called “firewall” has long been history at local level. The AfD is on the upswing because the government hates it, and many people like that because they hate the government. But if it doesn’t manage to get into power and thus into a position where things can be “changed” – and now is the time when they actually have to show success – then it will remain a mere protest movement, becoming worthless from the point of view of the masses after a while and losing their trust even before it could do so as a governing party.
New “alternatives” are then needed, and in this sense the BSW is now offering itself for two new state governments. However, forming a coalition will be particularly problematic in Thuringia: as the CDU still has an “incompatibility resolution” not only with the AfD, but also with the Left Party, only the BSW and the SPD remain for the government, which means 44 out of 88 seats in parliament and therefore no majority.
A coalition with the Left, a break with the “incompatibility resolution” as part of the CDU’s political principles, would be an own goal and would cause serious internal problems, i.e. it will have to form a government that is just as strong as the opposition. This minority government will probably be tolerated by the Left Party, because the Left Party has a problem: as an opposition party, it has to side with the government, because otherwise it is the only party with the AfD “against the government”, i.e. on the side of “the Nazis”, against whom they have campaigned so much, and against the BSW, which they had just denounced in particular for “flirting” with the AfD. This would make them lose their face completely; it would mean their destruction in West Germany. The Left Party is therefore even more compelled here than in the Bundestag to support with its votes a government of which it is not a part and which does not have a majority, thus making it capable of governing, which expresses and further advances the deepening of the crisis of revisionism and opportunism.
Moreover, it is questionable how stable the BSW will be internally. All this shows once again how deep the crisis of parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy is. Instead of solutions, new and bigger problems are constantly emerging. Even if this does not happen evenly, the trend towards the decline of imperialism is more than obvious. Bodo Ramelow could have noticed this at a second glance.
