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01/25/2010

Oskar Lafontaine, the left-wing firebrand who shook up German politics by co-founding the Left Party in 2007, announced his retirement from politics at the weekend because he is fighting prostate cancer. The former leader of the center-left Social Democrat Party was the figurehead of the Left Party and helped establish it as a political force in western Germany. It won 11.9 percent at the general election last September, making it the fourth-largest party in parliament, ahead of the Greens with 10.7 percent of total votes.

The party was created through the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the Communist Party that ruled East Germany, with a western political group made up largely of former Social Democrats and trade unionists.

Lafontaine's departure has robbed the party of its biggest electoral asset and is set to provoke a power struggle between its pragmatic eastern German wing and the more ideological westerners. It has also raised the likelihood of a broad-left wing "Red-Red-Green" alliance between the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens to challenge Angela's Merkel's center-right coalition in the 2013 general election, and in a string of regional state elections leading up to it.

Lafontaine, a populist who called former President George W. Bush a terrorist and questioned Western efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program, is a hate figure in the SPD because he abandoned the party in 1999, when he ditched his job as finance minister in a dispute with the SPD chancellor at the time, Gerhard Schröder.

Also, his move to found the Left Party badly damaged the SPD because it attracted many of its voters and members. The Left Party owes much of its popularity to its vehement opposition to the SPD's controversial "Agenda 2010" welfare cutbacks imposed by Schröder in 2003 and 2004.

Media commentators say Lafontaine's exit creates a power vacuum in the Left Party and removes an obstacle to Red-Red-Green alliances. But they warn that major policy differences remain between the SPD and Left Party, and that the SPD cannot expect a major rebound just because the Left Party's heaviest hitter has quit the stage. The damage, commentators argue, has already been done.

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Without Lafontaine the Left Party wouldn't exist in its current form. It took a figurehead like him for the eastern German regional PDS party and the western German protest movement WASG to become a national force. But even Lafontaine wouldn't have been able to form a party if it hadn't been for the anger at Schröder's Agenda 2010 reforms, the exhaustion of the SPD and a common anti-SPD sentiment in east and west. So it's naïve to think that the departure of Lafontaine will lead to the disappearance of the Left Party.

"For the SPD, which has long yearned for Lafontaine to quit politics, his departure has come too late. The SPD has fallen so far that a weakening of the Left Party promises only minor relief, and doesn't herald salvation. If the SPD ever wants to get back into power it will have to find common ground with the Left Party. "

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"This makes Red-Red-Green possible. The SPD can only live comfortably with a Left Party without Lafontaine, whom it never forgave for abandoning the party and the government. But the SPD itself will probably prevent Red-Red-Green for the time being. Not because it wants to. But because it's in such turmoil for the foreseeable future that it will scarcely be able to attract enough voters to be able to attain a majority with the Left Party and the Greens. Lafontaine's departure won't change that."

The left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

"Without Lafontaine the Left Party is in danger of wobbling in the west, where it is still fragile and vulnerable to in-fighting. But the SPD shouldn't be too pleased. Lafontaine's departure might improve relations between the parties a little, but it won't do much more than that. It's not true that Lafontaine was the only obstacle to a rapprochement between the Left Party and the SPD -- that notion overestimated the importance of personality in politics and underestimated how stable the Left Party is. The SPD is still clinging to the illusion that it can divide the Left Party. That won't happen. The rift has proven virtually impossible to close since the introduction of the Agenda 2010 reforms. Lafontaine didn't invent this rift."

The business daily Handelsblatt writes:

"This is good news for the Social Democrats and the Left Party, and cause for concern for the conservatives and Free Democrats. The three opposition parties could form a left-wing alliance at the national level, and it would have almost four years to forge a strategy for the next general election. The decisive factor is how the Left Party develops. If the party's pragmatic eastern arm gets the upper hand, then the obstacles to cooperation with the SPD and Greens will fall sooner or later. There's a good chance that the pragmatists will take over the reins of the Left Party.

"But the hopes being voiced by some Social Democrats that large numbers of Left Party members will now return to the SPD are unrealistic. "

SPIEGEL ONLINE writes:

"Lafontaine's withdrawal is a drama for the Left Party and a blessing for the SPD. SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel is trying not to look too triumphant. But he knows he is Lafontaine's true heir. Lafontaine was a brand name, he brought issues into public debate and set the tone for Germany's left wing. Gabriel has that talent as well. There's no one in the SPD, the Greens or the Left Party who takes more pleasure in red-tinted populism, in simple soundbites, than the SPD leader. It won't take long before the SPD under Gabriel's leadership bids its final farewell to the pragmatic style of its years in government. It will switch to pure opposition, and this will enable Gabriel to smash the Left Party, especially in the west.

"The departure of Lafontaine should worry Chancellor Angela Merkel. Until now she has been able to bungle along with her center-right government secure in the knowledge that her left-wing opponents were divided. That's about to change."