History repeats itself first as a tragedy and then as a farce, wrote Karl Marx in 1852. For once, the philosopher was right yesterday when Chancellor Olaf Scholz posed the question of confidence to the Bundestag, and was defeated. The last act of that unworthy spectacle of Germany which was the government crisis that began on November 6th took place in the chamber. It is the fourth time in German history that an executive has fallen in this way.
In the past, it had happened in 1972, 1982 and 2005, when chancellors were Willy Brandt of the SPD, Helmut Kohl of the CDU and the social democrat Gerhard Schröder. Three figures who have shaped contemporary Germany, the first as the architect of the Ostpolitik, the second as the father of reunification and the third with structural reforms. Scholz and his government, born on 8 December 2021 with the motto “Dare more progress”, were far from these parameters. It is here that the farcical repetition of history took place, with the end of an executive weakened by the internal divisions between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, incapable of managing the profound changes underway in Germany, from the crisis of the economy to that of the multicultural. With the locomotive of Europe plodding along and closing 2024 in a 0.2 percent recession, slowing down the continent’s recovery, the allies in forced cohabitation have above all failed to provide the Germans with the certainties and security they need. In this way, Scholz and his government contributed to the rise of extremist parties, AfD on the right and BSW on the left. Furthermore, the “traffic light” executive was increasingly marked by an unusual competition between personalities, with the protagonists placing particular interests before the general one. Scholz himself was the paradigm of this competition, a cold and calculating chancellor who does not listen and is alien to any self-criticism, attached to power and a champion of Machiavellianisms which end up escaping his control.
The self-preservation tactic culminated in the government crisis, which led to the expulsion of the Liberal Democrats from the coalition and the advent of a minority executive made up of social democrats and ecologists. Yesterday, this experience ended. Of the 367 votes needed for confidence, Scholz obtained 207 in favor and 394 against, while 116 deputies abstained. With his speech in the hall of the federal parliament, the chancellor gave one last show of egocentrism: no admission of responsibility, but attacks both on the former allies of the FDP and on the People’s Party, the main opposition group, to which he combined the claim of the their successes and the inevitable promises in view of the early vote on 23 February. The electoral campaign is already in full swing, with the SPD at 17 percent in the polls clearly surpassed by the CDU and CSU together with 31 percent.
However, the outgoing chancellor is confident of a big victory for his party and getting a second term. Once again, a demonstration of egocentrism as an inability to observe reality, putting one’s own person before everything else.
Supported by the leaders of the SPD, Scholz continues on his path with that Teutonic determination that could end in catastrophe. It doesn’t matter that Germany is increasingly unstable, with the risk of serious repercussions for the EU. Power wears out those who don’t have it, even for Scholz.
