Monday, February 21, 2005

Schleswig-Holstein

A regional election in Schleswig-Holstein sees the centrist CDU taking over from the leftist SPD as largest party.

This is partly a punishment for the SPD national government: it presides over 5 million unemployed, the worst level since Weimar.

And it´s partly a vindication of the underestimated CDU leader, Peter Harry Carstensen, who shows that uncomplicated decency is not always a weakness. Would there were more of his sort in Europe today.

Update: An alliance with tiny independent party the SSW (which represents the Danish minority) has meant that the SPD may remain in government even if the voting swing has indeed made the CDU the party with the most seats. The Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister since 1993, Heide Simonis, was unwilling even to consider handing over power as long as there was a possibility she could cling on. It looks like this may now come to pass. The winning CDU party looks to be excluded from power-sharing.

Such political behaviour is not, of course, illegal - but in going so blatantly
against the electoral flow, it is undemocratic, and in pandering so shamelessly to
the lust for power of a poliician rejected by the voters, it is politicking at
its most immoral, In short, it merits the blog's strongest sanction.

Accordingly, and with some regret,the blog calls down the Curse of
Von Esens
and invokes it on Heide Simonis' head.

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