Germany's 'grand coalition' may survive election

[September 22, 2009]  BERLIN (AP) -- It's the most-avoided issue in Germany's election campaign, but chances are good that Chancellor Angela Merkel could be leading another "grand coalition" of the country's biggest parties after Sunday's vote.

Merkel, a conservative, is campaigning for a new center-right government to end her four-year-old alliance with the center-left Social Democrats and give the country a clearer direction.

For now, polls give her preferred coalition a slim majority -- but she fell short in 2005 and is clearly keeping her options open. Her duel for the top job with Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier, her vice chancellor and foreign minister, conspicuously lacks bite and passion.

Their only television debate was so tame that moderator Peter Limbourg told them they sounded like an old married couple, engaged in something "more like a duet than a duel."

The two big parties often find it hard to strike compromises but "they have got it together in many areas," said Oskar Niedermayer, a political science professor at Berlin's Free University. Another alliance is "always an option that they have up their sleeve."

If Merkel's Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats can't muster a center-right majority, the only alternative likely would be one of several exotic, untried three-way alliances -- and commentators agree there is little chance of any of them coming together.

Facing a small and ideologically divided opposition, Merkel's coalition pushed through an increase in the retirement age to 67 from 65 and cut labor costs, but an attempt to reform public health insurance ended in a bad-tempered compromise that satisfied no one.

The coalition also partly reversed one of the previous center-left government's economic reforms by expanding jobless benefits for the older unemployed.

Common ground seemed nearly exhausted before the global economic crisis hit last year, but conservatives and Social Democrats then pulled together in decisive action to rescue banks and stimulate the economy.

"In the crisis, it has been shown that they can govern together," Niedermayer said. "People complain about the 'grand coalition' but they actually judge it rather positively."

Officially at least, no one wants a repeat, though no one is ruling it out either.

"I think it's good for a democracy when 'grand coalitions' are not the norm," Merkel said in her debate with Steinmeier.

It's questionable whether a second 'grand coalition' would have the energy to agree on much beyond "solutions to trivia," such as compromises on minimum wages, said Heinrich Oberreuter, a political science professor at the University of Passau.

Center-right politicians say a second "grand coalition" might not last four years, and that the Social Democrats -- under new leadership -- might jump ship before that, perhaps to form a government with the populist opposition Left Party, which opposes economic reform.

"I'm not ruling that out, but I don't think it's very likely," Oberreuter said.

One prominent Social Democrat, Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, advocated a repeat of the current coalition last week.

His party scrambled to squelch the suggestion. A repeat would offer the Social Democrats' strongest chance of extending their 11 years in government -- but the prospect isn't entirely appealing.

Despite holding half the Cabinet seats, they have trailed in polls as credit for the government's achievements has rubbed off on Merkel. They have been squeezed both by her popularity and by the Left Party.

[Associated Press; By GEIR MOULSON]

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