Berlin – Voters in Germany failed Sunday to give any party or candidate a clear majority to form a new government and choose a new chancellor.
The results, in what many in Germany had believed would be a historic vote for change, threw German politics into disarray.
After the announcement of exit-poll results Sunday evening, Germany presented the spectacle of both main candidates, the incumbent and the challenger, claiming to have been given a mandate to govern as chancellor.
The results gave the right-of- center Christian-Democratic Union and its leader, Angela Merkel, the highest vote share, about 35.2 percent, but even an unexpectedly strong showing by her party’s main coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, failed to give a majority in Parliament to Merkel, who just weeks ago seemed confidently on her way to becoming the first woman to lead Germany. The Parliament chooses the chancellor.
The Social Democratic Party of the incumbent chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, received 34.2 percent.
That means it has lost the slender majority in Parliament it has long enjoyed with its partner, the Green Party, which has enabled Schroeder to govern for the last seven years.
In that sense, the one sure result is that the current governing coalition has been voted out.
But it was also clear that Schroeder, who had been written off by the German media as a political has-been in recent weeks, had engineered a masterful maneuver against Merkel.
The election has been widely seen as a crucial one in Germany, the powerhouse of Europe’s economy, because it confronted the German public with fundamental choices at a time of deep economic difficulty, no growth, high deficits and record unemployment.
In essence, Merkel, who has often been likened to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, campaigned for deep free-market reforms and reductions in social welfare, while Schroeder campaigned on the notion that his government already has put into place the more modest reforms needed.
It was likely that Merkel would seek to forge an alliance with her rivals, Schroeder’s Social Democrats, in what has come to be called a “grand coalition,” even though Merkel spoke out strongly against such a possibility during the campaign.
“Red-Green has lost the election,” Merkel said in a statement late Sunday.
Red-Green is the shorthand term commonly used for the Social-Democratic/Green Party coalition that has governed Germany since 1998.
“That’s the good news,” Merkel said.
“Now we have to form a government,” Merkel continued. She admitted, “We would have wished to achieve a better result.”
Schroeder fired back: “I don’t understand, and I am certain the people in Germany also don’t understand, how the conservatives can claim a mandate to lead.”
Schroeder ruled out cooperating with the conservatives in any “grand coalition” unless he remained chancellor.