From: poser@vxcrna.cern.ch (Till Poser   ZEUS Offline)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: Wahlen in Norddeutschland
Summary: Various reality checks here, no flamage at all
Date: 7 Apr 92 18:23:34 GMT
Reply-To: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de
Followup-To: soc.culture.german
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA

In article <XQ21GGI@math.fu-berlin.de>, weberwu@inf.fu-berlin.de
(Debora Weber-Wulff) writes in soc.culture.german: 
|>The election results. They are not a pretty sight.

No quibble here. I'd like to intersperse a couple of reality checks
here, however.

|>Schleswig-Holstein:
|>Up until about midnight the Greens made it over the 5% barrier
|>and were in parliament. This was pretty cool, as this meant that
|>Mr. Engholm, the candidate for Ministerpresident, would not have
|>a seat of his own in parliament, and the SPD did not have a
|>majority, and would thus need a coalition partner. 
|>Shortly after midnight a "computer error" was declared, and the
|>Greens were left about 300 votes shy with 4.97% of the vote, 
|>giving Engholm his seat and an ever so slight majority.

Reality check No. 1:

Your usage of quotes and choice of words might lead people to suppose
that the elections were "fixed". This is neither fair nor true, and You
can be quite sure that the Greens will be the first do demand and get a
recount of votes.

|>The two main raving loonies from the Reps, Franz Schoenhuber and a
|>guy with wild eyes that looks like he's out of the asylum on vacation
|>got up on the TV soapboxes spouting "German money for German schools,
|>German money for German culture, save the DM [from the ECU], throw
|>the asylum seekers out". We turned off the TV and went for stiff
|>drinks. The Reps have invited David Irving to Germany to tell us
|>all why no Jews died in any concentration camps etc. 
|>
|>People, it is happening all over again, just like when Hitler
|>came to power in the '30s.

Reality check No. 2

Albeit it is quite an alarming symptom, there are some facts which do
argue against Your highly alarmist view:

1) The voters seem, for now, not to be wedded to the extremist parties
   they voted for. It was clearly a tactical protest vote to spite or to
   goad the big parties they used to vote for.

2) The concerned parties are antagonistic to each other. Frey has been
   around for a long time, and so has Schoenhuber. Both have come and
   gone and returned again, but there is little coherent development in
   their parties. For now.

3) The rest of the parties reacted almost immediately. It was highly
   interesting and gratifying to notice during this election that
   _noone_ ever contested the notion that the erstwhile much maligned
   Greens belonged to the democratic spectrum. The earlier mudslinging
   between CDU and SPD should by now have ceased. Hopefully.

4) The concerned parties are highly unstable with a very thin verneer of
   qualified personell, politically. If isolated, and the problems which
   agitated the voters acted upon in some way, they will have no
   platform. Yet.

If one attempts a factual analysis, this election was a vote for a
solution of the highly hysterically treated asylum problem and the fears
about the reunification business. It was definitely not a show of
feistiness, but a demonstration of a highly worried component of the
population, who are sick and tired of being wordmouthed at.

|>                           And yesterday they got a martyer to the
|>cause. A bunch of Reps were eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant in
|>Berlin (that's right, Foreigners out, but leave the restaurants here).

Reality check No. 3

There have always been good foreigners and bad foreigners. Good
foreighers (in their parlance!!) are that industrious miner Ali, the
Doener shop keeper Mustafa, and the chineese restaurant host Chen, who
are honest hardworking fellows, bla,bla, bla. So what else is new? This
double standard is par for the course for all types of racists and
racisms all over the world, not only for the Germans.

|>And still, I keep my foreigner's passport. I would like to be a
|>German so that I could vote, but at the moment I want nothing much to
|>do with this folk.

Reality check No. 4

While I certainly am less than an avid and enthusiastic German, I feel
somewhat included in the last phrase. While I can understand Your
feelings, it is somewhat early to dismiss all Germans as incurable
mindless fascists. If, on the other hand, this is something of a call to
arms it might interest You to know that it might antagonise Your
sympathisers.

The situation is neither hopeless, nor is there any irrevocable change.
This deplorable election must be analysed and the insights reacted upon.

Wer die Flinte ins Korn wirft, sollte drauf achten, dasz er dabei kein
blindes Huhn erschlaegt!

|>
|>"Der Schoss ist fruchtbar noch aus dem das kroch." - B. Brecht

Wohl war, aber tritt nicht denen auf die Fuesze, die evt. fuer die
noetige Abtreibung sorgen koennten.

|>Debora Weber-Wulff                       dww@inf.fu-berlin.de

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