by Peter Löcke //
Only three weeks to go. Then the time has come. Elections will be held in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1. Election days are festive days for democracy. Here, the sovereign sets the direction and decides who will be the sovereign in the coming years. Who wins, who loses? Will it be "business as usual" or a change of political direction? Only the people decide. That's what I once learned at school. Enough of the jokes.
Let's discuss the upcoming elections in the East. You are welcome to call it an election forecast. I call it an anticipated analysis. Who will win? Nobody. Who loses? So-called democracy.
The elections in Thuringia are somewhat more in the media spotlight. So let's start there. The protagonists or top candidates are Björn Höcke (AfD), Mario Voigt (CDU), Bodo Ramelow (Linke) and Katja Wolf from the BSW, who is unknown to me. The supporting actors of the Berlin traffic light will not be considered any further. The SPD, Greens and FDP have a total of just over 10 percent [1]. I find it remarkable that the Greens, with a predicted 3 percent, continue to receive their own bar in charts and do not fall under Others like the FDP. I digress. Back to the main players, the upcoming winner, the AfD. Actually, the party shouldn't win at all. It should have been banned in time. Now it's probably too late. Two politicians are responsible for this.
The current Thuringian Interior Minister Maier from the SPD and, above all, his subordinate head of the constitution Kramer, also from the SPD, have unfortunately messed things up. Incidentally, the aforementioned head of the VS, Kramer, is not a lawyer but has a bachelor's degree in social education. Above all, he has a great deal of flexibility of opinion. Stephan J. Kramer converted from the CDU to the FDP to the SPD, just as he converted to Judaism as an adult. This wonderfully versatile conversion disorder made him the supreme guardian of the Basic Law [2]. I digress again. So will the AfD win? Yes and no.
The AfD and its lead candidate Höcke will almost certainly emerge from the elections as the strongest party. That is certain. It will therefore achieve a relative majority of votes. However, it is only an unwritten law that this circumstance leads to government responsibility. It has already happened several times in the old Federal Republic that the strongest party did not come to government [3]. So what will happen in Thuringia? A firewall coalition of losers or a tolerated minority government. Let's think one step further about what that will lead to.
In Thuringia in particular, anger at the so-called old parties will continue to grow because the will of the voters has been ignored. This in turn will strengthen rather than weaken the AfD in the medium term. And in the media, ignoring the will of the voters will be sold as a triumph of defensive democracy. Headline?
The AfD's seizure of power was prevented.
Remember: good parties want to win elections and take responsibility, bad parties plan to seize power. So who wins on balance in Thuringia? Nobody. Who loses? So-called democracy or what's left of it. Perhaps things will look different in Saxony.
There is currently no threat of a "seizure of power" in Saxony. Michael Kretschmer and his CDU lead the polls by a safe margin over the relatively unknown AfD lead candidate Jörg Urban [4]. And yet the AfD is also polling 30 percent here, making it five times more popular than the SPD and the Greens. As in Thuringia, the third light of the traffic light, the FDP, can only be found in the dark dregs of the Others. So which governing coalition will emerge, assuming that the firewall against the AfD remains in place? The CDU will form a coalition with one or more left-wing parties. Does that reflect the will of the voters? Of course not. Two thirds of voters in Saxony want conservative policies. Even BSW voters have had enough of red-green. In Saxony, too, the SPD and Greens have only reached 12 percent. They have had enough of the leading media selling this 12% of voters as a social consensus. Who is winning? The wall in people's heads. Who loses? The sovereign, the citizen.
But who am I? Just a Wessie whose vote literally doesn't count in the upcoming elections in Thuringia and Saxony. If I listen to vox populi at a bar in faraway North Rhine-Westphalia, I learn that even 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans still haven't understood what democracy is. I usually contradict this with the following words.
"Yes, he did. He just remembers what dictatorship feels like. Quite unlike you. We actually need a commissioner for the West."
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
English 
German 
Spanish
6 Responses
What is currently happening in Germany is unbearable. It's the lies that are told every day on television and in the daily newspapers.
People are being exalted who have understood nothing, but nothing at all. It is the Americanization that is driving the Germans to ruin. War-mongering without end. What has happened to our society? A small-town mayor who defends everything from war training to the supply of weapons to a corrupt country is being hailed. Putin is compared to Hitler and insulted as an agrarian.
What is Nato doing? What are our occupiers from the USA doing? What are the German stooges of the USA doing and where have they waged wars?
No, you don't have to be a Putin expert to find the truth. Russia has not waged any wars in the last 40 years. Whereby we Germans accompanied our Beatzer worldwide. I think that's enough!
I don't understand all the excitement, as the AfD in government should show what it is capable of, that it is less corrupt and respects the Basic Law. We will see whether they can only make big speeches or whether they will actually make a difference. The same applies to the Wagenknechte. If they change things for the better, the totally ossified other parties will also have to change their front men and undergo a metamorphosis if they don't want to disappear into insignificance sooner or later. The SPD and FDP are well on their way there. Young people are no longer voting for the self-proclaimed centrists - partly because their policies have recently turned more and more against young people.
hello,
this essay was simply great, especially the finale that the ossis already know what democracy is but also know what dictatorship is.
Sincerely
dieter reichel
Could it be that the dictatorship in the East was far more democratic than the "democracy" in the West?
If I was dissatisfied with something in the East, I would write a "petition" and it was ALWAYS answered, no matter where you wrote it, quite democratically. I can also say that these submissions made changes possible, quite democratically.
Here and now I know that letters to politicians tend to end up in the circular file, possibly at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, but answers....
The dictatorship has not been over for as long in the eastern states as it has in the west! This will be one reason why the East ticks and votes differently. Let's hope for a change! And especially for a fair election without manipulation and electoral fraud!
I have already noticed the sensitive "vigilance" of our East German compatriots during the Corona period. These people are often quick to recognize where citizens are being unjustifiably deprived of their freedom or scope for action.
From my point of view, the "Wessi" (unfortunately) too often appears jaded, self-confident and too strongly preformed by the "leading media". The good German Michel - you could say.
It would probably strengthen the resilience of the population - against encroachment and manipulation - if we learned from each other ... but without a firewall in our heads.