Another Sunday, new strikes against Angienomics in Europe

The Protestant pastor's daughter and German Chancellor Angela Merkel must be starting to dread Sundays. Last Sunday, it was France, Greece and the small German state of Schleswig-Holstein. This Sunday, it was Greece again and the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia/NRW), where around one-sixth of German voters live.

In the Landtag (state parliament) election in NRW, Angie's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was clobbered. (Heribert Prantl, Norbert Röttgen, Kanzlerkandidat in spe a. D. Süddeutsche Zeitung 13.05.2012.) The Social Democrats (SPD) seem to have pulled 39% of the vote and their now seemingly "natural" coalition partner the Greens won nearly 12%, which means they should be able to form the new NRW government with a "red-green" coalition, according to the German political color schemes. The SPD's Hannelore Kraft would be the expected new NRW minister-president (governor).

Angie's current national coalition partner, the liberal (in German terms) Free Democrats (FDP) pulled a respectable 8%. But the CDU's 26% counts as a disaster, a debacle. NRW's CDU head Norbert Röttgen had been considered a potential successor to Angie as the national Chancellor candidate for the CDU, a hope that seems to have vanished for the moment after Sunday's results, a loss of around 8% of the total vote compared to the previous NRW Landtag election. Wahlschlappe. Within the CDU, Röttgen had counted as a leader of the wing of the Party more willing to form coalitions with the Green Party and more environmentally aware. (Röttgen gibt Amt als Chef der NRW-CDU ab Spiegel Online 13.05.2012)

As Heribert Prantl puts it, "Die Kanzlerschaft der Angela Merkel begann also mit dem spektakulären CDU-Sieg in Nordrhein-Westfalen von 2005. Die spektakulär furchtbare CDU-Niederlage vom Sonntag könnte nun das umgekehrte Signal sein." ("The Chancellorship of Angela Merkel began with the spectacular CDU victory in North Rhine-Westphalia of 2005. The spectacularly awful CDU defeat of Sunday could be the opposite signal.") In other words, the political drift even in German politics is heavily against Angie and her CDU.

There is a small protest party called the Pirate Party - yes, really - that won over 8% in NRW and so will be represented in the Landtag. The Left Party fell below the 5% minimum vote to have Landtag representation. The failure of the Left Party to capitalized politically on the depression that began in 2007 is a remarkable fact in itself. The initial analysis from the Left Party paper Neues Deutschland, SPD legt zu, CDU stürzt ab 14.05.2012, blames the poor showing on intense internal party strife and poor media coverage.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the President (head of state) Karolos Papoulias held an emergency meeting with the heads of the first-place conservative New Democracy (ND) Party, the second-ranking Radical Left party Syriza and the third-place social-democratic Pasok Party to form a national unity government that would continue the banker-collection-agent role that Angie demands and which the current national unity government lead by ND and Pasok has been fulfilling. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras refused to sign on to any agreement that involved supporting the current EU/Angie-imposed austerity budget, which means economic suicide for Greece. (Lefteris Papadimas and George Georgiopoulos, Greece Lurches Towards New Vote, Hard Left Leads Reuters 05/13/2012)

If Papoulias can't get agreement for a new government, new elections would be called for June.

The prospects for Greece remaining in the euro look increasingly dim.

This week, François Hollande is inaugurated as President of France and has already been summoned to Berlin for orders from talks with the Princess Angie von Merkel. A spokesman for Hollande's French Socialist Party said in a public statement that people didn't have an election just to have Angela Merkel decide on the fate of all the other EU countries. Kritik an der Kanzlerin. Hollandes Sozialisten greifen Merkel an Spiegel Online 13.05.2012. I would think Hollande must be feeling tremendous pressure over that visit. It looks to be an early and critical test of his Presidency. If he knuckles under to Angie this week, it's hard to see how he can hope for France to be anything other than a political satellite country of Germany in the EU structure as long as Angie's mode of EU domination continues.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, european union, france, françois hollande, greece