The Greens will decide who will rule North Rhine-Westphalia
This Sunday’s parliamentary elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state with some 18 million inhabitants, are seen as crucial, nine months after the general election in which the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) won and the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. So much so that many local media are talking of “small elections to the Bundestag”, the federal parliament, on the pulse of the Social Democrats with the conservatives of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the powerful industrial region. After the SPD’s victory in March in the Saar region, where it gained an absolute majority and ended more than 20 years of conservative government, and the CDU’s victory last Sunday in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, where its candidate and local Prime Minister Daniel Günther secured more than 43% of the vote as his traditional rivals were voted out by the Greens, Social Democrats and Conservatives who determine the tiebreaker in elections seen as a litmus test for Scholz and his rival and chairman of the CDU. Friedrich Merz.
All polls converge in the announcement of a melee in the final stretch between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, with both formations hovering around 30% of the vote, albeit with a small advantage for the CDU and conservative Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst , who strive to stay in the can. Both parties would lose something percentages from the elections five years ago in favor of The Greens, which rise about 10 points, are above 16% and will ultimately be the ones likely to crown the new Rhineland head of government North Westphalia with their decisive support. The rest of the small parties will be just companies. The liberals of the FDP lose strength and fall to 6%, the isolated ultra-nationalists of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) will not exceed 7% and the left will not even be able to enter the Dusseldorf parliament, well below the 5% barrier % of the votes. This result would be especially painful if confirmed for the Liberals, who have been small coalition partners of the Christian Democrats for the past five years and could be removed from power to become a low-profile opposition.
A defeat for Wüst would be a serious setback for Merz, who comes from the state where the elections are being held. The 46-year-old prime minister last October took over as successor to Armin Laschet, the failed conservative candidate in Germany’s last general election and then responsible for the collapse of the CDU, which was relieved of the party’s leadership by Merz in January. Since then, he has tried to revive the conservatives and needs a win to motivate the party. The SPD also depends on a victory in the great Rhenish state to stabilize itself. Thomas Kutschaty, the Social Democratic candidate, promised Scholz in March that “the comrades from North Rhine-Westphalia will make governing in Berlin easier.” The federal chancellor is in low popularity hours because of his indecisive policy of aiding Ukraine in the war with Russia. If this is the case, it will certainly be the ecologists who decide which side to tip the balance on when it comes to forming a government.
The Greens are supported by the broad popular approval of the work of their federal cabinet members. The Chancellor and Minister of the Economy, Robert Habeck, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, are currently and by far the ones who lead the list of Germans’ favorite politicians in positions one and two respectively, also because of their determination to support Ukraine. by sending weapons. Both have caused environmentalists to abandon their fundamentalist pacifism to get involved in forcing the end of the conflict by supporting the delivery of German war material to the attacked country. “In this situation where people have to defend their lives, their democracy and their freedom, Germany and also the Greens must be prepared to face the reality and this is a reality in which the aggressor must be pushed back,” Habeck recently claimed.
Source: La Verdad
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