Marriages Without Love

By William Drozdiak

In Bonn, the construction of coalitions gets complicated

The parliamentary ploy bears the sinister label of Koenigsmord (murder of a king), but the intent is entirely bloodless. As soon as Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's ruling coalition crumbled two weeks ago, Opposition Leader Helmut Kohl pressed ahead with his plan to become West Germany's first Christian Democratic Chancellor in 13 years. Rebuffing Schmidt's call for elections, Kohl prepared to introduce a rarely used vote of no confidence in the Bundestag to bring down Schmidt's minority government immediately. If his strategy works, Kohl will move into the modern glass-and-steel Chancellery along the bank of the Rhine this week.

But the staid predictability of Bonn politics quickly took on the intrigue of a Florentine court last week. Initially, Kohl was confident that former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, leader of the centrist Free Democrats who bolted Schmidt's government, could deliver at least 33 votes from his party's 51 members of parliament. This total would provide Kohl 259 votes, when added to the 226 of his coalition. Schmidt's S.P.D. has only 215 seats, and depended on heavy Free Democrat support to stay in office. Kohl and Genscher had been talking quietly of creating a new center-right coalition for more than a year, ever since the Free Democrats began slipping badly in the polls as a result of factional disputes plaguing Schmidt's Social Democrats.

Kohl and Genscher, however, were unprepared for two challenges that made their task more complicated and the ultimate outcome less certain. Genscher was confronted by an outburst of opposition from left-leaning elements in his party about the wisdom of breaking with the Social Democrats. And Franz Josef Strauss, leader of the Christian Social Union, the Christian Democratic Union's sister party in Bavaria, raised his thunderous voice against the notion of merging with the Free Democrats. Insisting that "a marriage without love" was not destined to endure, Strauss issued a "nonnegotiable" demand for national elections by the end of the year. He expected that the Christian Democrats would win a majority, allowing them to rule alone.

Strauss's call for early elections sent shivers of fear through the Free Democrats. Genscher had repeatedly stressed to Kohl that he needed time to repair the damage to his party's popularity and that a rush to new elections could prove fatal. The respected Allensbach Institute produced a snap poll last week showing that popular support for the Free Democrats had dropped to 2.3%, a precipitous decline from the 10.6% they won in the 1980 national elections. According to the West German constitution, a party must get at least 5% of the vote to be represented in parliament. After hearing Strauss's demand, Genscher declared that unless elections were delayed until next year, he would not provide the votes necessary to elect Kohl Chancellor.

Sensing a threat to his bid for power, Kohl invited Genscher and Strauss to his cluttered office in the Bundestag to thrash out their differences. Around midnight on Monday they emerged with a compromise accord. Strauss abandoned his demand for elections by the end of the year and accepted Kohl's proposal to hold the vote on March 6, 1983. He also got Kohl and Genscher to agree to postpone the no-confidence vote against Schmidt until Oct. 1.

It was a shrewd maneuver that put even more pressure on Genscher going into last Sunday's election in Hesse. If the Free Democrats won less than 5% of the vote, Genscher's bargaining hand would be drastically weakened. He might not get all four ministerial posts, including the Foreign Ministry for himself, that he had demanded. The outcome in Hesse could even call into question the degree of F.D.P. support for Kohl in the looming no-confidence vote.

A growing minority of Free Democrats regards any alignment with the Christian Democrats as foolish opportunism and wants to explore the chances for a reconciliation with the S.P.D. After Schmidt's speech announcing the collapse of his coalition, women parliamentarians of both the S.P.D. and F.D.P. tearfully embraced one another in the aisles. Describing her party's realignment as "a coup from above," Free Democratic Member Helga Schuchardt said: "It is not we who are splitting the party but those who got us into this situation." A Free Democrat voter in Bonn complained, "I voted F.D.P. because they were in coalition with Schmidt. Now they are switching to Kohl, and I feel cheated and dismayed."

Four out of eleven F.D.P. regional groups asked the party leadership last week to call an emergency convention to debate the shift in coalitions. The demand, however, came too late to allow the session to be held before this week's scheduled no-confidence vote in the Bundestag. In a letter to party workers, Genscher defended what he called "our courageous decision" to join the Christian Democrats and assured his followers that the step would prove "worthwhile." In response to the attacks on his decision, Genscher reminded members that the F.D.P.'s political survival had been jeopardized by the fact that it was associated with the Social Democrats, who had been steadily losing power. The F.D.P. was also damaged by its constant bickering with Schmidt's party over defense and economic issues. Example: the moderate F.D.P. opposed the Chancellor's program of heavy deficit spending on public projects to generate jobs.

Genscher's critics inside the party contend that they will suffer at the polls because they jolted the country's deep yearning for stability. West Germans are so afraid of political disarray that Koenigsmord has been tried only once before.* Some analysts believe that voters may punish the F.D.P. more for disrupting the existing order than for feuding with the Social Democrats. Says French Political Scientist Alfred Grosser, an expert on Germany: "In 1976 and 1980, the F.D.P. benefited at the polls by being able to say, 'We are no longer a switching party.' Now the Free Democrats are once again a switching party."

Strauss insists that he is not trying to spoil Kohl's chances. His motive, instead, is to gain as much clout as possible within the new coalition at the expense of Genscher's Free Democrats. After arriving in Bonn last week, Strauss declared: "It is high time that the F.D.P. learned moderation and modesty from its decline." With opinion polls showing that 52.7% of West German voters now support the Christian Democrats, Strauss believes the time is ripe to form a government without the F.D.P. He also has his eye on the posts of Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister, which would be offered to Genscher as leader of the coalition's second partner. "Strauss is not going to sabotage Kohl's election, because he knows that this would catapult him out of office," says a fellow Christian Democrat. "But he is going to make as much trouble as possible in order to undermine the Free Democrats as a long-term political partner." For this reason, nothing would please Strauss more than to see the F.D.P. falter in the Hesse elections.

Kohl, on the other hand, is anxious to keep Genscher and the F.D.P. as a counterweight to Strauss, who was defeated handily in the 1980 elections by Schmidt. Kohl knows that governing with the formidable Bavarian at his elbow would be like a dachshund's trying to control a rogue elephant. In addition, Kohl feels that the Christian Democrats need to forge a strong alliance with the F.D.P. if they hope to remain in power for more than one term. Kohl is reported to believe that the conservatives in West Germany today do not hold a "natural" majority, since some of their support derives from voters temporarily disaffected with the Social Democrats. Once the S.P.D. emerges from its political doldrums, the traditional balance between the two major parties will probably be restored, and the support of a third party will be indispensable for any government.

Since the coalition's breakup, Schmidt's party has received a "sympathy boost." The latest Allensbach poll showed that the Social Democrats have rebounded from a low ebb of 31.4% last July to 36.8%. During the Hesse campaign, the S.P.D. plastered Free Democratic posters with red stickers denouncing their "Betrayal in Bonn." In recent speeches, Schmidt has heaped scorn on the Free Democrats, calling Genscher a Weinpanscher (someone who sells wine diluted with water). As he took the helm of a riverboat on the Rhine last week, Schmidt implied that he was glad to be rid of the Free Democrats. "With the F.D.P. you can count on one thing: their lack of character," he declared. "If they were stupid but still loyal, that would be worse for us, but they were unreliable as well as stupid."

For the moment, the traumatic divorce has silenced Schmidt's left-wing critics. Writers and intellectuals who opposed the Social Democratic leadership's decision to accept NATO's installation of cruise and Pershing II nuclear missiles on West German soil next year are again rallying around the party. Author Guenter Grass and his wife have for the first time become card-carrying members of the S.P.D. because they did not believe in being schoenwetter (fairweather) socialists.

In the short term, Schmidt's fall would not substantially change West German policies. Kohl's new coalition would probably cut some welfare benefits and provide more business incentives to spur economic recovery. Foreign policy, as one C.D.U. deputy puts it, will be characterized by "continuity with new accents." Kohl, who is more reticent and less arrogant than Schmidt, would probably improve the tone of Bonn's sometimes testy relations with Washington. Unlike the S.P.D., the Christian Democrats do not have to put up with a noisy minority that opposed a strong NATO defense against Soviet expansionism.

Some analysts warn that the decline of the middle-roading Free Democrats could produce a growing polarization within the country. Others question whether the German penchant for dynamic leadership, after 13 years of Brandt and Schmidt, can be satisfied by the unassertive Kohl. At a time when a protracted global recession has shrunk hopes for a return to the country's enviable prosperity, West Germans must also confront the unknown parameters of a new political era. --By William Drozdiak. Reported by Roland Flamini/Bonn

* In 1972, Christian Democratic Leader Rainer Barzel, tempted by the government's narrow margin of seats, sought to topple Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt. He failed by two votes, and in the 1972 national election the Christian Democrats suffered significant losses.

With reporting by Roland Flamini

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