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.
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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%).
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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.
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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.
Trump gains ground over Harris and the elections are emerging as the closest of the century
The Republican candidate for the White House, former President Donald Trump, has gained ground in the polls of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the selections of November 5 are emerging as the closest of the last century in the United States.
Harris’ candidacy, who replaced President Joe Biden after he threw in the towel in July, initially aroused great enthusiasm that was transferred to the polls, but Trump has managed to pulverize that advantage when there are 16 days left until the elections.
According to the latest forecast of the FiveThiryEight portal based on the average of polls published nationally and in key states, Trump achieves a slight advantage over Harris and has a 52% chance of winning the November 5 elections.
Despite the fact that the Democrat leads the intention to vote at the national level, the Republican is more favored by the Electoral College, the system by which the states grant a certain number of electoral votes to the winning candidate.
Two weeks ago, the forecast of the same portal gave Harris a 58% chance to defeat Trump.
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The difference between Harris and Trump
Although the Republican has gained ground in recent weeks, the situation is so tight that the chances of victory of each of the two candidates are practically equivalent to throwing a coin into the air.
The difference between Harris and Trump is less than two percentage points in the seven decisive states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) so that a small statistical error could alter the result.
In addition, at the national level, the vice president only takes two points ahead of the former president, a narrower difference than the margin between Biden and Trump on any of the days of the 2020 campaign.
After those elections, the Republican refused to accept his defeat and promoted the vote count in some key states and several litigations that were dismissed in court.
In 2000, the election result was up in the air until the Supreme Court gave the victory to Republican George W. Busch on the Democrat Al Gore in Florida, which was then a hinge state.
But according to the FiveThirtyEight portal, to find elections as close as what the polls draw, we have to go back to 1876, when the Republican Rutherford Hayes beat the Democrat Samuel Tilden by a single electoral vote: 185 against 184.
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Every vote counts
In such a tight scenario, every vote counts and the two candidates are doubling their presence in the seven decisive states, where in some cases the early vote has already begun with a high turnout.
The rhetoric and the crossfire between the two has also intensified with attacks and insults.
Trump suggested this week that he would be willing to deploy the military against the “internal enemies” of the United States, in an apparent reference to his political rivals, while Harris described his rival as “fascist” and “deranted.”
The vice president has decided to raise the tone against Trump in an attempt to revitalize her campaign, to which former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have also joined, and former first lady Michelle Obama to give her a new impetus.
The Republican is this Sunday in Pennsylvania, where he is expected to visit a McDonald’s and accuse Harris of having invented that he worked for that fast food chain as a young man.
For her part, the Democratic candidate, who turns 60 today, is in Georgia before traveling to Pennsylvania, where tomorrow she will campaign with Liz Cheney, a former Republican congressman facing Trump.
The president of Brazil cancels his trip to Russia due to a domestic accident
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, canceled this Sunday for “medical guidance” his trip to Russia to attend the BRICS leadership after suffering a “domestic accident” in which he hit his head, government and hospital sources reported.
The Brazilian Presidency said in a statement that it was decided to cancel the trip due to a “temporary impediment for long-term flights,” but that Lula will participate by videoconference in the meeting, which is held between October 22 and 24 in the Russian city of Kazan.
The president, who is 78 years old, was injured on Saturday on the back of his head, which led him to be admitted to the Sírio-Libanês Hospital in Brasilia, according to a medical report that does not go into more details.
Despite not going to the summit, the Government clarified that Lula will comply next week with a “normal” work schedule in the capital.
The meeting in Kazan, hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is scheduled to receive more than 30 heads of state and government.
The BRICS, whose original members were Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are in full expansion, after including four other countries this year: Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.
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During the meeting, the leaders of the member countries must define what will be the criteria for other nations to be part of the bloc as partners.
Brazil wants two of the criteria to be, for example, not supporting economic sanctions applied without authorization from the UN and defending the reform of the Security Council, according to diplomatic sources in the country.
Thousands of Georgians march in Tbilisi in favor of the country’s European future
Thousands of Georgians marched today in Tbilisi in favor of the European future of the country six days before parliamentary elections, which President Salomé Zurabishvili sees as an election between the EU and Russia.
Under the slogan “Georgia chooses the EU” the supporters of rapprochement with Europe met in five points of the capital from where they marched in a column towards the Plaza de la Libertad, where they sang the anthems of the Caucasian country and the EU.
The action, called by non-governmental organizations and opposition parties, was also attended by the Georgian president.
From the largest opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), they warned the Government that the people “will not give up their European future.”
European future
“This action is the last warning to the honorary president of the ruling Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, that the Georgian people will not give up their European future,” said MNU President Tinatin Bokuchava.
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Meanwhile, Zurabishvili asked the attendees to demonstrate the will to “return to the country freedom, independence and a European future.”
Participants in the demonstration said that it is a “rehearsal of the electoral victory of the opposition,” while the Georgian Dream, which has ruled Georgia since 2012, assures that it will obtain about 60 percent of the support, after which it will re-establish relations with the West.
Relations with the Kremlin
The Caucasian country has significantly improved its relations with the Kremlin coinciding with the war in Ukraine, which has dramatically worsened its ties with the United States and the European Union.
After the Georgian Parliament passed the Foreign Influence Transparency Act in May of this year, which the Georgian opposition considers similar to the one approved in Russia to suppress civil society, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom froze cooperation programs with Georgia.
In addition, Brussels and Washington also criticized the Georgian Parliament last September for approving another document that prohibits, as in Russia, information regarding homosexuality.
