Some 10 weeks after Germans elected a new Bundestag, its members finally voted Angela Merkel to be the first female and youngest chancellor of post-war Germany.
The Sept. 18 election for the 614-member Bundestag resulted in the Christian Democrats (CDU), with their partner Christian Social Union (CSU), edging out the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) under Gerhard Shroeder by a bare 1% of the vote.
Together the conservative allies with 226 seats lead the SPD with 222 seats. The remaining seats went to the Free Democrats (61 seats), Left Party alliance (54 seats) and the Greens (51 seats).
Since the three smaller parties were unwilling to support either of the two parties with the largest number of seats in forming a coalition government, the only alternative remained to form a grand governing coalition of the CDU/CSU with the SPD.
This has occurred. But that it took over two months to negotiate this outcome and elect a new chancellor does not entirely bode well for German democracy.
The Bundestag elected on a proportional representation system reflects deep divisions within the society. Such an arrangement normally prevents a party emerging with a majority of parliamentary seats, and impedes decisive actions sometimes required to deal with continuing political or economic malaise.
Germany is not alone in Europe, squeezed between rising unemployment and a stagnant economy—economic growth forecast for 2005 was 1.5%, down from 1.8% for 2004—that can no longer sustain social spending in a competitive global market. Matters are even more difficult in France with double-digit unemployment and a near stagnant economy.
European average for economic growth has hovered around 2% in recent years. This contrasts with U.S. growth between 3% to 4%. In the last quarter the U.S. economy recorded a 3.8% growth. In economic terms, Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war are mere hiccups in an economy that remains a growth engine for the world.
The most compelling contrast between the U.S. economy and that of Europe is the former created 57 million jobs during the past three decades, and in the same period the latter managed only four million.
The relative economic stagnation, social divisions, political stalemates, an aging population with a negative replacement birth rate and a restive unassimilated non-European immigrant population together hang like foreboding stormy clouds over an uneasy Europe.
The times are an ominous reminder of Europe’s past between the two world wars in the last century. Germany is not quite there, but it should remember the collapse of the Weimar Republic when nightmare consequences occurred under the stress of a precarious economy and political stalemate with unacceptable unemployment numbers and inflation.
Political unrest within France has twice exploded this year. The first when a majority of voters rejected the European Union constitution supported by President Jacques Chirac.
The second has been France’s own version of Germany’s Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazi youth smashed Jewish properties on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938) with French youths of north and black African origins, mostly Muslims by faith and culture, rioting across the country over the past two weeks and more.
Many Europeans were upset when Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary of defence, contrasted “old Europe,” meaning France and Germany, with “new Europe,” referring to countries of the former Soviet bloc, during heated debates preceding the Iraq war.
Rumsfeld was perhaps ahead of the times in telling us to watch out where “old Europe” is headed.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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