NEWS: German Chancellor Schroeder Out, First Female Leader In

Exit polls are showing that Germany's Chancellor Schroeder has lost the German parliamentary election. The polls show Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats as having won 37% of the votes whilst Schroeder's Social Democrats won 33%. Merkel won on a platform of economic repairs and fixing the rift between Berlin and Washington. After forming a coalition, with which to lead the German parliament, Merkel will be Germany's first female chancellor.



This is a victory for Germany's economy and I think the fact that Merkel is pro-American is a sideline issue to the fact that Germans are demanding their once powerful economy back.

Merkel is the protege of long serving German Chancellor, Helmutt Kohl. She will also be the first East-German chancellor of Germany since reunification in 1990. She has suffered criticism and derision from West Germans who still resent the East Germans and blame them for the current German economic woes.

Congratulations Angela Merkel

[edit on 18/9/05 by subz]

Thank God!!! Schroeder was the biggest [censored] there ever was! Congrats to Germany, I think I'll be able to travel to their beautiful country once more!

I hope you are right DJ otherwise the author is going to have a lot of mud on his/her face for declaring a victory on exit poles alone. We all know how accurate they are

I wonder how her Communist past will reflect on her actions as chancellor and am kinda surprised how some people plain ignore her communist past just out of hate for Shroeder.

Not sure how their elections are won but right now Schroeder say he main remain in power after some kind of talks are done if others agree with him.

news.yahoo.com...
election;_ylt=AgTOHS9ypr7hxcZbd6gEtDSs0NUE;_ylu=X3o'___'A2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

Gerhard Schroeder refused to concede defeat and said he could still theoretically remain in power if talks with other parties were successful.

Link will work on cut and paste but not as clickable sorry.


Ah the plot thickens----- quick vote this story up, lets see who may end up with mud on their face.



[edit on 9/18/2005 by shots]

I think this is the story:



Hopefully it's wrong...I'd love to see Schroeder booted out, followed by his buddy Jacques Chirac.

Edit: David's Medienkritik (my favorite source for German news) doesn't sound very optimistic...they're following it here:

+++UPDATE+++: Because of the relatively close CDU-CSU results relative to the SPD, both Schroeder and Merkel are laying claim to the Chancellery. It still looks like the CDU-CSU has the better position, but anything is possible, with Schroeder pointing to the fact that he is far more popular than Merkel in a one-on-one comparison.

medienkritik.typepad.com...

[edit on 9/18/2005 by djohnsto77]

If it all comes to pass -- thank God. That guy refering to then newly elected Pres Bush as H_____er made me sick. Now if he's been ousted from German office I will again say "sit down and shut up".

Hasta Levista Baby !

Dallas

He's probably working to create a coalition between parties to get a majority rule.

Different from the US, where there are only 2 party's worth mentioning when it comes to how many votes there are collected, in europe most elections have several big parties getting alot of votes, never (or at least very rarely) resulting in a 50% vote win for 1 party.

So then there is a negotiation between the parties to form a coalition to form a majority of votes, leaving the other parties that aren't in the majority to form the oposition.

If Shroeder can form a majority with the other parties, he still represents the majority of the people and still becomes Chancellor.

Imho, this is a better representation of a democratic election then the US 2 party system because if there is 10 party's that get 5% each, representing 50% of the people, these 10 small party's can work together to rule as the actual majority.

This majority group has to come to a consencus on who will be Chancelor or Prime Minister and who all will get minister posts.

If this happend in the US, then if in the last elections, if for instance, Bush got 45% of the votes, Kerry got 40% of the votes and 15% went to Badnarik, Nadder and other party's, Kerry could have won by forming a coalition between the Democrat party and the other smaller party's.

These coalitions only last untill the next elections, so its not party mergers, but just a coalition during the current rule.

[edit on 18/9/05 by thematrix]

Originally posted by thematrix
If this happend in the US, then if in the last elections, if for instance, Bush got 45% of the votes, Kerry got 40% of the votes and 15% went to Badnarik, Nadder and other party's, Kerry could have won by forming a coalition between the Democrat party and the other smaller party's.

I understand what you are saying, but have one question. Would the coalition have to be formed with Kerry since he had the lesser number or could bush have also formed a coalition with that 15%?

Just to make my self clear what I am asking does the lesser number have to form with the other lesser at all times or can they go with the higher if they want? Hope that makes sense.

hm at the moment nothing is clear here in germany...this election is really strange...the current government ( SPD + Greens ) have no majority, the challengers CDU/CSU + FDP have no majority too...votes are still beeing counted and Merkels party lead is melting according to some predictions...crazy and disapointing, a clear change would have been better.

Originally posted by thematrix
I wonder how her Communist past will reflect on her actions as chancellor and am kinda surprised how some people plain ignore her communist past just out of hate for Shroeder.

I have as well...

Her passed is highly suspect, her early career she was a very "Pro-Socialist/Communist" the wall falls down and all of a sudden her political alligencies change?

Odd indeed...

I wouldn't care if she was the sister of Kim Jong-Il, anyone would be better than Schroeder

Originally posted by djohnsto77
I wouldn't care if she was the sister of Kim Jong-Il, anyone would be better than Schroeder

Actually the BBC reported the other day, in her early career she spoke highly of Stalin...

Yeah because it paid divedends to bad mouth the Communist party and its leaders whilst living in communist East Germany...

Maybe she chose the path of non-persecution and paid lip service to the communist party ideals to avoid the attention of the apparatchiks.

I'm sitting here watching the whole thing on TV, actually the race is to close to call, depends on what coalition the CDU can form. In any case the CDU aint no better than the SPD, which one wins won't make that much difference, one is as bad as the other.

I totally agree with subz there, you can't hold her responsible for any statements made while living in the former East Germany...she absolutely couldn't have come out with pro-American pro-business statements under that regime.

If he's truly gone fantastic and I echo djohnsto77.

Dallas

djohn: whoever can create the majority coalition is the winner. So yes, Bush, even already having a majority in single party percentage of votes, could and would have to form a majority coalition to be able to rule if Kerry topped his vote percentage with a coalition.

So it pritty much comes to who forms a coalition that gets 50% of the votes or in case the other parties are just plain not willing to work with another party, the majority of votes between the several coalitions.

Over here you usualy have 3 or 4 parties getting between 15 and 25% of the votes each, so usualy we have a 2 or 3 party coalition to form a majority.

I've actualy been wondering how it would work in the US if for instance the Republican and Democrat parties broke clean in 2, resulting in say 4 parties getting almost 25% of the votes. Is there a method in place in the US to define who gets to rule? Or does it actualy work the same as in Europe, by forming party coalitions, but hasn't happend in ages since there are only 2 mentionable parties left in the US?

Originally posted by djohnsto77
Thank God!!! Schroeder was the biggest [censored] there ever was! Congrats to Germany, I think I'll be able to travel to their beautiful country once more!

Besides the fact that Schroeder thought Bush was a jerk, why are you so happy he wasn't re-elected? What experience and policies do you think that Merkel will have to offer the German people, that was better than her predecessor's? Or is the fact that Schroeder didn't like Bush good enough reason for a head of a nation to be removed?

Did you really refuse to visit a country, because you did not agree with it's elected leader?

And on a side note, maybe Hillary can save us from being one of the last nations on the Earth who has never elected a female leader.

Originally posted by thematrix
I've actualy been wondering how it would work in the US if for instance the Republican and Democrat parties broke clean in 2, resulting in say 4 parties getting almost 25% of the votes. Is there a method in place in the US to define who gets to rule? Or does it actualy work the same as in Europe, by forming party coalitions, but hasn't happend in ages since there are only 2 mentionable parties left in the US?

Well our Congress is totally separate from the Presidency, it doesn't matter at all who's in the legislature (many Republican Presidents in the past had to deal with a Democratic Congress, and Bill Clinton had to deal with a Republican Congress for most of his presidency)...as far as Presidential elections, it's just the person who receives the most votes that win all that state's electoral votes (in most states), and the person who gets the most electoral votes wins the presidency, so no matter how many political parties the U.S. had, we'd never have the concept of a coalition government like in European parliamentary systems.

edit:

I should also note that Bill Clinton never in either of his elections received more than 50% of the popular vote due to third party candidates (mainly Ross Perot). And of course Bush in his first election actually lost the popular vote, but won the electoral vote.



[edit on 9/18/2005 by djohnsto77]