Leftist Rebellion
June 25, 2007
Social Democratic Party chairman Kurt Beck could "be the chancellor tomorrow" if he accepted The Left party's demands for changes to Germany's labor, social and foreign policies, Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD party head and current Left party chair, said in an interview published Monday.
"When (Beck) asks, 'Are you ready to push through a minimum wage, reinstate the old pension system, revise Hartz IV (social welfare reforms) and pull troops out of Afghanistan?' then Beck can be chancellor tomorrow," Lafontaine told German news magazine Der Spiegel.
A coalition of the SPD, The Left and the Greens would represent a majority of parliamentary seats. But Beck, along with other high-ranking SPD party members, flatly refused Lafontaine's offer at a weekend conference to determine the SPD's future direction.
General rejection among SPD
"The offer is ludicrous," SPD parliamentary group leader Peter Struck told Sunday's Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "The Left Party will be in the opposition forever."
Made up of disgruntled, left-leaning ex-Social Democrats and members of the former East German communists, The Left party won its first seats in a western state government last month and has risen in political polls to 10 percent, putting it on equal footing with the Green party and a point ahead of the free-market liberal FDP, according to a Dimap survey conducted for the ARD public broadcasting network.
Currently trailing the CDU by 9 percent, Beck worked over the weekend to separate his party from both The Left and the CDU by concentrating on domestic labor issues while Chancellor Angela Merkel continues making a name for herself on the international stage.
Social and economic responsibility
"We want economic goals to be inseparably connected to social justice and ecological rationality," Beck said in a speech broken up several times by applause. "We will seek a very clear position on putting people first in the economy, contrasting neo-liberal developments in the CDU.''
Beck said part of the SPD's strategy would include continuing to push for a national minimum wage, a topic of conflict in the grand coalition of SPD and Christian conservatives, after the cabinet reached a compromise on extending wage protections to a dozen industrial sectors.
"We want social economics to be protected in the future," he said. "Whoever works full-time has to be able to live from it."
The CDU has strongly opposed a national minimum wage.
More common ground with The Left?
That, however, is one of the SPD's goals that could be reached if it would leave the grand coalition and agree to working with The Left, according to Dietmar Bartsch, The Left's general manager.
"The SPD will book success on neither the minimum wage nor the inheritance tax with the CDU or FDP," he told Monday's Leipziger Volkszeitung. "It will only work with us."
But even though the SPD would be able to push through a national minimum wage with Lafontaine's help, a coalition would cost the Social Democrats more than they would gain, according to Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
"We could probably reach a minimum wage decision with him, but the price would be to isolate Germany," Gabriel told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday.
Gabriel also said he doubted the sincerity of Lafontaine's offer, saying it had more to do with presenting himself in the media than with political decision making.