Beiträge mit tag "Gerhard Schröder

It’s been a while since I last wrote an entry in English here, but today I feel like updating the non-German-speaking world on my view of what’s going on in this funny little country…I have written a lot about education in Germany in my “Dude, you bent my tower!” posts part one, part two and part three and in “Fun facts about Education in Germany”.

In the latter I also gave a brief introduction to how the government works. Today, I’d like to elaborate more on that.

First of all, unlike in the USA for example, the time a chancellor can stay in office is not limited…we hold general elections every four years and as long as he or she gets the majority, either on their own or through a coalition, they will stay in office until they turn to dust…

The most effective ways of losing the position are either by  losing the cold war against communism and having the Federal Republic of Germany annected by the German Democratic Republic as it happened to Helmut Kohl in 1989, after destroying serving his country for 16 years, or, like Gerhard Schroeder did, by joining the Communists because they offer a more attractive salary.

Gaining the position is the tricky part. Majorities are hard to get these days as the average German has about as much interest in the deeper workings of politics as their trademark Dachshund…not surprisingly, the number of people who actually bother going to the ballot keeps dropping and dropping…

But we all know that a man named Angela Merkel did it and got elected a second time in a row, despite all bad press and most likely just for the sake of proving the Peter principle. And then the game of musical chairs began…

I refuse to comment on Guido Westerwelle, I have done so already and have nothing to add…

A more interesting thing are “Die Linke” and their story. There was a man named Oskar Lafontaine, a fine example of both solid  mental illness politics and why one should always hire a professional. He had been good friends with Gerhard Schroeder until Gazprom political differences drove them apart. And there was a man named Gregor Gysi whose economical status had severely decayed after his Fuehrer had emigrated to Chile…he had learned a lot from his former and now defunct employer, but not from life and as both Lafontaine’s and his political views are so far out  left-wing that they come back in on the right Pac-Man-style they decided to ignore any majorities and just found a party on their own..a principle which  had already been tested in a broad range and had worked reasonably well in the past century…

Just to make the point clear, Lafontaine and Gysi are that kind of people who would consider Josef Stalin “too far right”. Hence those two made it possible that hell froze over and the CDU actually joined forces with the FDP and tried to form a coalition…well…it seems they’re still trying…the game of the musical chairs began…