por admin » Lun May 10, 2010 8:11 am
Las elecciones Alemanas le dan una derrota al partido de Merkel
El motivo fue la ayuda a Grecia.
Merkel es del partido conservador Cristiano Democratico y su socio junior el Free Democratic party (probusiness) perdieron en una de las regiones mas populosas de Alemania.
Esto no es bueno para los libres mercados, por que Merkel perderia la mayoria y tendria que negociar con la izquierda del pais.
German Election Delivers Setback to Merkel Party
By MARCUS WALKER
BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right alliance suffered a stinging defeat in a crucial regional election Sunday amid a voter backlash against German financial aid for Greece, adding to Ms. Merkel's woes as her government grapples with the mounting debt crisis in the euro zone.
Ms. Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union and its junior partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, were set to lose power in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, according to projections based on exit polls and early vote counting Sunday evening.
Supporters of Germany's SPD in Düsseldorf cheer as exit polls indicate a defeat for Angela Merkel's alliance.
.The result means Ms. Merkel's national government, which also includes the CDU and FDP, is set to lose its majority in Germany's upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, which represents Germany's 16 states.
That would force Ms. Merkel to negotiate with left-leaning opposition parties to pass important economic legislation, hitting her government's ambitions of pushing through overhauls such as tax cuts.
It wasn't clear late Sunday whether the center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, and their allies the Greens had won enough vote to form a governing majority in the state legislature of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is home to Germany's industrial heartland.
.The CDU had been expected to lose votes in the regional election, but outright victory for the center-left would be a surprise. The results suggest that rising voter anger in the past few days over Ms. Merkel's decision to grant aid to Greece may have cost conservatives significant support.
The need to negotiate with SPD-led states in the Bundesrat could complicate the task of passing further legislation that might be needed to tackle the euro-zone debt crisis. On Friday, Ms. Merkel relied on the center-right's Bundesrat majority to pass Germany's €22.4 billion contribution to the international bailout of Greece. The SPD abstained, leaving Ms. Merkel to face public ire over the unpopular Greek bailout.
The CDU won around 34.5% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, according to projections by German state television—worse than expected and about 10 percentage points less than in the state's last election in 2005. The SPD also won around 34.5% according to the projected result, while the Greens were projected to win around 12.1%.
Social Democrats celebrated the result as a sign of national revival, following a heavy defeat in Germany's national elections last year when the SPD slumped to a postwar low of 23%.
Germans vote in a state election that risks weakening Chancellor Angela Merkel's government just months into her second term in office. Video courtesy of Reuters.
."The SPD is back," Hannelore Kraft, the party's leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, told her cheering supporters in Düsseldorf on Sunday, even though her party lost ground compared with 2005 elections in the state, when it won more than 37% of the vote.
The FDP won only about 6.8% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, well below the 14.6% that the FDP won in German national elections last fall. The radical Left party won about 5.6% support in the regional ballot.
If final results give the SPD and their allies the Greens a majority of seats in the state legislature, Ms. Kraft would become the next premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, replacing the CDU-FDP administration of Ms. Merkel's conservative colleague Jürgen Rütgers.
If the center-left parties fall short of a majority, possible outcomes include a bipartisan coalition of the CDU and SPD, or a left-wing coalition comprising the SPD, Greens and the anticapitalist Left. A bipartisan coalition wouldn't automatically support Ms. Merkel's federal government in the Bundesrat, even though it would include the CDU, analysts say.
CDU general secretary Hermann Gröhe called the results "extremely painful."
Ms. "Merkel will face criticism from inside her own party, to which she will have to justify this weak result," said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University.
For Ms. Merkel, the result is roughly the equivalent of a defeat in midterm elections for a U.S. president's party. However, Ms. Merkel is far from a lame duck, despite the setback, Mr. Neugebauer said. The chancellor's hold on power remains strong, for lack of a credible challenger within her own party or from the opposition, he said.
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Anatoly Maltsev/European Pressphoto Agency
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, prior to the Victory Day parade on Sunday in Moscow.
.Losing control of the Bundesrat effectively ends the center-right's hopes of cutting income taxes. However, that may upset the FDP, the strongest advocate of tax cuts, more than Ms. Merkel, who may be content to focus instead on cutting Germany's rising budget deficit, analysts say.
Ms. Merkel has in the past shown that she can strike compromises with the SPD, with which she governed Germany in a bipartisan "grand coalition" from 2005 until 2009.
The election in North Rhine-Westphalia took place against a background of rising angst in Germany about the debt crisis on the euro zone's fringes, which German taxpayers fear will impose heavy costs on them.
Many Germans are angry at having to pay to save profligate Southern European countries such as Greece, while other voters believe Germany needs to act to stabilize the euro but that Ms. Merkel has been indecisive.