The inconclusive German election was thrown that poor country into chaos:
At the moment no party has an overall majority in the new parliament – with the CDU on 225 seats, the SPD on 222, the FDP on 61, the Left party on 54, and the Greens on 51. The only way for either Merkel or Schröder to govern is at the head of a coalition. The problem is: which coalition? The FDP’s Guido Westerwelle has ruled out doing a deal with Mr Schröder; Mr Schröder has ruled out forming a ‘grand coalition’ with the CDU under Mrs Merkel; and everybody has ruled out doing a deal with the new Left Party.
Based on those exclusions, the only remaining option that gets a majority of the seats is the so-called Jamaican Coalition of the CDU, FDP, and Greens (black, yellow, and green like the Jamaican flag). They’re going to have to settle the fate of Germany’s nukes, where the smart bet is to build more with better technology to keep the air clean and all that. The Greens in many countries are anti-immigration and reactionary on a host of issues, so it’s not as far fetched as it might be for them to be allied with capitalists, at least for the power-grabbing aspect of it.
A minority government is also possible, but in any case it appears to me that Schroeder is toast.
On the other hand, the analysis I quoted comes from The Grauniad, so there’s likely a bit of self-deception involved in it, if not outright spin. Ideologically, the CDU has more in common with the SPD (Schroeder’s party) than with the Greens, so the Grand Coalition is the combination most likely to prevail if the decision is to be made on anything but a bare-knuckle politics basis. The CDU would then drag the SPD to the right, and the FDP would be included for their partnership in the next election, so Germany would be able to modernize its labor and environmental laws without too much trouble.