ALLIANCE FO§ DEMOCRACY

The trauma of coalition negotiations … and let Merkel‘s will be done

After the war, government statements announced what the government of the respective legislature had done. They presented the plans and intentions to the popular representatives, i.e. the Parliament. There have been coalition agreements since the 1960’s; the first was concluded between the CDU/CSU and FDP on 20th October 1961. On nearly eight-and-a-half pages, the future partners explained that political work means willingness to compromise and protection of the Coalition, above all through freedom of expression. The agreement, which was rather a legal construct, was supplemented in 1962 by a working paper and employment programme.
Before this agreement, parties who wanted to govern together came to terms with each other. Like to government of the CDU/CSU, FDP and DP (the German Party, a right-wing party, which still exists today but has declined in importance), which existed from 1949 to 1953. This was followed by the 2nd administration of the CDU/CSU, FDP, DP and GB/BHE (the Pan-German Block/Federation of Displaced and Disenfranchised persons, another right-wing party, which no longer exists today). The coalition partners described in letters how they understood the work of the government. The 3rd administration from 1957 to 1961 was a coalition of the CDU/CSU and DP. Agreements were made, but they were never made public.
All these agreements and treaties lower under the cloud of back-room agreements. Democracy and the people are always threatened when the public is inadequately informed and explanations of the actors (or even earlier the press, such as Spiegel affair) are missing. It also was and is always questionable which negotiators, acolytes or other bearers of information were involved in the negotiations, and for what purposes.
The Great Coalition this time was supposed to have consisted of 75 experts, who in a dozen working groups brought forward that which will go down in history as the Coalition Agreement of the 3rd Great Coalition of the CDU/CSU and the actual opposition, the SPD, since the founding of the country.
After 5 long weeks, during which the press has pounced on every trifling item of news, the agreement perhaps soon to come into effect has now been drafted. Together with the compromises concluded by Wednesday, 27th November 2013, it will form the basis for the government marriage - a third Merkel government, which allows its competitors to rejoice over better pay, and otherwise has no need to do too much, at least nothing relevant to government, because Merkel takes care of all of that herself. The professional combatant has shown how politics functions without the support of partners, and how every attempt at cooperation and involvement can be prevented.
Earlier, after the war, when such agreements were not regarded as being in the interests of the Constitution, it was the Chancellor who decided what was what, but it was the ministers who conducted the actual affairs.
Co-determination by the people was undesired by the CDU/CSU and all forces of the right. Ministers were therefore not agents; Parliamentarians were representatives of the people, and still decided according to their conscience. At least that is what we want to believe today, because unfortunately these actually quite reasonable rules of the game went by the board and were replaced by party line compulsion, suppression of freedom of expression, etc.
The coalition agreement became the customary practice. In the same way that popular co-determination was abolished by continuing suspension and the habit of rejecting it, coalition agreements were soon de rigueur and are even considered as constitutionally accepted agreements (derived from Articles 63 Para. 1 and 21 GG). Article 21 GG is particularly important in this respect, because according to this article, parties are jointly involved in the formation of the political will of the people; this applies without restriction outside of the organs of the constitution, and in the run-up to action by the state. For the normal citizen, this means: The party is always right. It is the party which decides what is to be done, and what not.

The citizen is thus disenfranchised: democracy is nothing more than a dictatorship of the party(ies).

Unfortunately many other dictates have been added over the years, like the dictate of the Euro rescue, to which pensions, taxes, returns and prosperity are today being sacrificed. And all this of course without the citizen having any opportunity to protest. The people, and in this case also the Chancellor, will learn on 14th December 2013 which Minister will sit in which chair, because this what it is really all about - jobs for Ministers. This will be decided according to yes-man qualities, and also staying power, because the art of lying, the ability to talk one’s way out in the event of a scandals, and secretiveness appear to be the qualities which today make up the profession of being a politician.
It seems now to be quite unimportant that the agreement of the future government partners of the CDU/CSU and SPD was worked out between so-called experts who have no Bundestag mandate at all, and are therefore not representatives of the people; like delegates from state parliaments or the Minister of State Hannelore Kraft or also SPD member Martin Schulz, the recently appointed President of the European Parliament, who has no say in Germany as to what the German Bundestag should or should not do.
After all these constitutional interpretations, nothing remains to the citizen apart from the belief in the SPD basis, which must still correspond to the fairy tale book. If they adhere to the party line, citizens will be faced with the imminent end of the Euro in the form of the crash. This would rescue the quota and perhaps bring so much hardship and misery to Europe and Germany that humanity might finally learn from its mistakes, and decide that politicians and other holders of power have to be controlled. It must also be decided that the people has the final say, and without any restriction.