International
Germany celebrates 34 years of reunification but with political cracks due to populism
The Germans celebrate 34 years of reunification, a process that ended with the division of the two Germanys, although the recent electoral behavior of the East Germans, where populist parties have become strong, cracks the traditional political scenario of the country.
Behind the festive atmosphere marked by the events of the 34º anniversary of the reunification led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a concern weighs the political reality: the booming populism of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
The results of these parties in appointments such as the European elections last June or the recent elections of the federal states of Eastern Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, have hit the Central European nation, in which new political divisions between East and West seem to be opening up.
“In 1989, the two Germanys started from different economic and social points and the expectation was that soon there would be an equalization and that would also equalize political points of view,” Martin Schulze Wessel, historian at the University of Munich and expert in Eastern Europe, told EFE.
“At the socio-economic level there is still no equalization, although progress is being made in that direction, but with regard to the vision of politics and political culture, that equalization has not taken place, moreover, there have been new divergences,” he said.
Schulze Wessel alludes to the fact that, after 35 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the standard of living in what was the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has increased although the gap between the east and the west is still observed in data such as that the East Germans receive a salary 14% lower than the Westerners, according to data from the Hans Böckler Foundation, a study center specialized in the Teutonic world of work.
This Thursday, in a speech delivered in the city of Schwerin (northeast), Scholz invited to abandon the idea that total equality between east and west in Germany can take place.
“The idea that unification would end completely when the situation in the east would be exactly the same as that in the west, when there is no west that is a single unit, is an idea that does not help us,” Scholz said in the context of the celebration of German Unity Day.
Strong populism in the east
Politically, the east has a different dynamic, as shown by the fact that in the last European elections AfD was – with few exceptions such as Berlin – the most voted force in what constituted the GDR, while in the western territory it swept away the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
In those elections, the CDU won with 30% of the votes, followed by the AfD, with 15.9%, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD, 13.9%) and The Greens (11.9%).
In the European elections, BSW broke out with 6.7%, a percentage celebrated as a success because that formation was barely a few months old and because, in East Germany, the party of the leftist figure Sahra Wagenknecht managed to be the most voted party, after AfD and the CDU.
According to Daniel Kubiak, a researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin, told EFE, “we can see that the party system of East Germany differs from the West, because in the west there are still two majority parties (CDU, SPD), which have been joined by the Greens, the FDP and AfD, and it is largely stable.”
“The east is more volatile and people tend to vote for parties located at the ends,” he added.
This, according to Kubiak, is not something unique in Europe, since the vote has also become more volatile in other nations of Europe, such as France, Italy, Poland or Austria, the latter country in which the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) won the legislative elections last Sunday.
The end of the consensus on aid to Ukraine
Among the issues with which AfD and BSW differed in the European elections, but also in the federal states of the east that voted in September, where the far-right formation won in Thuringia, while the Wagenkecht party is emerging as a government partner in Saxony and Brandenburg, is the opposition to military support for Ukraine.
AfD and BSW want Germany to break with the current policy of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has turned his country into the nation in Europe that provides the most military aid to Ukraine.
“The European elections and the elections in the federal states of the east have shown a division and that there are populist parties, the far-right AfD and BSW, that go out of the consensus of the other parties, and there seems to be a rift between east and west,” Schulze Wessel concluded.
International
One Dead, Three Injured in Shooting at Cree Nation in Saskatchewan
One person was killed and three others were injured in a shooting reported early Tuesday in the Big Island Lake Cree Nation, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, according to local media.
Police said they were alerted to the incident in a remote area located approximately 392 kilometers northwest of the city of Saskatoon. Authorities issued a dangerous persons alert for two suspects, who were described as armed.
Saskatchewan police urged residents to seek shelter immediately, lock their doors, and avoid the area while the situation remains under investigation. Officers are working to determine whether the shooting was a targeted attack or a random act of violence.
As a precautionary measure, seven health-care facilities in the surrounding area were placed under lockdown, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said in a post on X.
International
Mexico’s President Visits Victims After Train Derailment Kills 13 in Oaxaca
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum visited on Monday the victims injured in a train accident that left 13 people dead in the southern state of Oaxaca and announced financial assistance for those affected by the derailment of the Interoceanic Train, which was inaugurated in 2023.
The train, carrying 241 passengers and nine crew members, derailed on Sunday while traveling along the Interoceanic Corridor, a major infrastructure project that connects the Pacific coast with the Gulf of Mexico across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The corridor was one of the flagship initiatives of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration (2018–2024).
Sheinbaum visited three hospitals in the neighboring towns of Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz, where around 20 injured passengers remain hospitalized. She also went to a funeral home to accompany the families of those who lost their lives in the accident.
According to Mexico’s Navy Secretary, Raymundo Morales, the accident occurred when one of the locomotives derailed, causing all four railcars to leave the tracks.
International
Six killed, including baby, in armed attack near tourist beach in Ecuador
Six people, including a baby girl about two years old, were killed on Sunday in an armed attack near a tourist beach in southwestern Ecuador, police said. The shooting, carried out with rifles, also left three people wounded.
The incident took place in the coastal town of Puerto López, in the province of Manabí, a popular tourist destination known for whale watching. The attack occurred amid a surge of violence over the weekend that left at least nine people dead nationwide, according to local media reports.
“There are six fatalities and three injured,” Colonel William Acurio, the local police commander, told reporters on Sunday. He confirmed that one of the victims was a baby “approximately two years old.”
Authorities have not released further details about the motive behind the attack or whether arrests have been made.
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