Germany – DVD: On the Elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article posted by Dem Volke Dienen on September 21.
A Short Note on the Elections Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
On Sunday, the electoral circus came to visit the capital and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The head of the federal government, the fraud Friedrich Merz, described the results as follows: “…It is a disaster.” He is right, but at the time he was not sure still about the real extent of this disaster.
Last year Merz had stepped up with the aspiration to “halve” the AfD. Now it was seen, that the CDU, of which he is the leader, lost around two thirds of their percentages in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and around one third in Berlin. The AfD on the other hand, which mainly mobilized people to vote for them by being “against” everything the other parties do, additionally gained more than half their previous votes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and nearly the same in Berlin. Notably they did this even with the increase in electoral turn-out (Berlin plus 12 percent, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern plus 7 percent).
The massive crisis the government is in, is most exemplified in the results in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The CDU managed to receive their worst results there ever. Since the beginning of the FRG, that is in 77 years, the CDU has never obtained such a catastrophically bad result. With 4.9 percent, it is the first time in the history of the FRG that the CDU failed to reach the 5 percent required to enter into a state parliament.
The press declaration by Merz – shortly after the prognosis of the elections had been announced and after confirming with his regional sovereigns that currently none of them want to overthrow Merz to take his place – is an expression of denying reality. In so many words, it is a “Keep it up!” – the chancellor without ideas or perspectives could not muster more.
The anti-AfD electoral mobilization was used by the SPD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Left Party in Berlin. Still, Manuela Schwesig, ministerial president of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, did not only have to raise an anti-AfD electoral campaign (“The woman against blue”) but also against the federal government, of which her Party forms a part.
Contrary to the elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the compositions of the pigsties in Berlin and Schwerin [translator’s note: capital of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern] make the relatively uncomplicated formation of new state governments a possibility – which is necessary as the current government of both states have clearly been voted out.
Still, neither the Left Party in Germany, which is forced to enter into a coalition with the Greens and the SPD, nor the SPD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, entering into a coalition with the Left Party and the Greens, will be able to even come close to realize what they have promised.
Correspondingly, those who voted for them yesterday will sooner or later turn their backs on the electoral circus once more.
Let us remember the multiple campaigns the Left Party has used – “rent ceiling”, “Expropriation of Deutsche Wohnen and co.” [translator’s note: a campaign demanding that the State buy out several big real-estate companies in Berlin], etc. – while they were in the opposition, and then broadly fritting away the State-owned real estate while in government (then still under the name of PDS). In addition the SPD has already announced that they will not partake in this mumbo jumbo. The Left Party will surely throw all “principles” over board to obtain the mayoral office, especially as the Greens and SPD could also form a government with the CDU.
The crisis of parliamentarianism, the crisis of bourgeois democracy has in no way ended with these elections, it has not even calmed down. Rather, these results will lead to a deepening of this crisis. The federal government especially has an increasingly weak base – both parties forming it lost votes in both states, collectively 15 percentage points in Berlin and 12 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
At the same time, it is evident that the future state governments will have to be “anti-AfD governments”, enabling the AfD to benefit from the fact that they will be the only “opposition” Party in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and do not have to expose themselves by taking up government responsibility.
The tendency of the masses – of not wanting to go on as before and of the rulers not being able to rule as before – is ever more evident and is growing stronger. The federal government, which is bad and getting weaker, has no strategic plan whatsoever, neither in questions of politics, nor economy. They face the challenges in a completely impotent manner and their only guiding principle is to deepen exploitation and repression. The massive police presence to protect the elections is evidence of this. In Berlin an additional 1,100 cops were on the streets on Sunday, so the electoral farce could be carried out without interruption. In this way the government is digging its own grave ever more deeply and rapidly.
The only thing that the rulers may like about the election results is the increased turn-out. It was not without basis that the AfD announced immediately after the publications of the prognostics that: “We have done a great service for democracy”. It may be that the AfD has done this, and the fact remains that their main contribution to the rule of German imperialist financial capital has been to increase the supposed legitimacy of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie – which they call “democracy” – by driving people to the electoral urns in their favor, as well as against themselves.
