[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: Greens in Baden-Wuerttemberg

[Gerry Gras]

Here is an email from my friend in Germany, with a lot more info.

Gerry


Linda wrote:
> Hi Gerry!
>

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> The rest are still to be counted. Then I can give
> you the results for Hessen.
>
> But of course the big sensations were in the Landtagswahl elections in
> Rheinland-Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg, since they were voting for
> their state governments!
>
> As for Baden-Württemberg: the sensation is this:
> The CDU went from 44.2% to just 39% and the FDP went from 10.7% to
> just 5.3%. That means those two parties can no longer get together
 > to form a majority (>50%) and present a government.
> On the other side: the SPD also slightly lost votes, going from
> 25.2% to 23.1%, but the Greens more than doubled their presence,
> jumping from 11.7% to 24.2%. The left party (Die Linke) didn't make
> the 5% hurdle and neither did the other splinter parties.
>
> That means, when they give out the parliament seats: CDU goes from 69
> seats down to 60. The FDP goes from 17 seats down to 7. The SPD goes
> from 38 seats down to 35 and the Greens edge out the SPD by going from
> 15 to 36 seats, one more than the SPD!
>
> As you can see, the CDU is still the biggest fraction, with 60 seats,
> but SPD + Green have 71 seats, which is an absolute majority, so they
> can form the government. Since the Greens have one more seat than the
> SPD, they get to be Ministerpräsident - the first Green
> Ministerpräsident ever!!! The government will be called Green-Red
> instead of Red-Green to reflect this. Hurray!
>
> The sensation in Rheinland-Pfalz was that the FDP did so poorly that
> they didn't even get 5% (dropped from 8% to 4.2%), so they got kicked
> out of parliament this go-round. Again, the SPD and CDU are neck and
> neck. SPD went from 53 seats down to only 42, a BIG loss! The CDU
> had a
> small gain from 38 seats to 41. But it wasn't enough, since the Greens
> went from being out of parliament (no seats because only 4.6% of the
> vote) to having a whopping 15.4%, thus picking up 18 seats. A red-
> green government will therefore be able to stay in power with 60 seats
> to the CDU's 41 seats. As with B-W, Die Linke party and the other
> splinter parties didn't make the 5% hurdle.
>
> It's quite exciting and a new milestone in German politics. They have
> now shut down all of the old (pre-1980) reactors and it is
> questionable
> whether they will ever be turned on again (including Biblis near me in
> Koblenz). The arguments here are along the lines of: will the energy
> companies be allowed to take the remaining time on these reactors and
> add that to the remaining time of the other reactors? Will the deal
> that
> allowed the energy giants to extend the running time of all their
> reactors well beyond the original timeline worked out by the SPD/Green
> government (Schroeder/Fischer/Trittin) be reneged? Can it be reneged?
> The energy giants are already considering legal action (breach of
> contract, etc.). It will be very interesting to see what happens. I
> think the CDU/FDP government was quite shocked at all the anti-nuke
> people who came out of the woodwork when they closed the new deal last
> Nov which extended the timeline of all the nuclear plants. And the
> protests just took off after Fukushima. Merkel saw the writing on the
> wall, but couldn't do anything about it.
>
> To be realistic though, it's just a drop in the bucket, since Germany
> only has 17 nuclear plants. But I'll take what I can get. Shut them
> all
> down! Stop generating nuclear waste! Get out of this business and go
> back to being on the cutting edge of alternative energy generation!
>
> - Linda
>
> On 28 Mar, 2011, at 22:33 , Gerry Gras wrote:
>
>
> Hi Linda,
>
> the recent election results from Germany have created some
> excitement among Greens here (Santa Clara County and
> California, at least, probably for the GPUS, but I don't
> know).
>
> Apparently there is some chance that the Greens may lead
> the coalition there, but it is by no means clear, due to
> what it takes for anyone to get 50%.
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12876083
> http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/27-1
>
> It's not clear to us how likely it is for the Greens
> to be able to form a coalition, because we don't know
> anything about the parties other than CDU, FDP, SDP,
> and Greens.
>
> Apparently, the main reason for the Greens doing so well
> is the Fukushima troubles. Ah well.
>
> Gerry
>