We are the people! (are we?)

Some time ago we had elections in Hesse, Germany- the results: the CDU-governor lost a substantial amount of public support, while the SPD-candidate made quite some surplus and the new left-wing party ‘DIE LINKE’ made it into parliament.

The SPD struggled quite some time for whether they should have their candidate elected by the ‘DIE LINKE’ or stay to the words they had given in the election campaign, that they wouldn’t collaborate with them.

To me the question is, why such discussions exist and why a party that democratically got 5,1% of voices shouldn’t be a legitimate partner for the established parties.

I see the following reasons for unwillingness to accept collaboration with ‘DIE LINKE’:

• they are successor of the GDR communist party and the west-german establishment seems to have problems collaborating with a party where some members where part of the GDR-establishment
• they are more left than the SPD and thus seem like a threat to their results
• for whatever tactical reasons the SPD had given word to not collaborate

I would see the following reasons for collaboration (i assume there would be more to list here…):

• programmatic matching in many issues (like education, minimum-wages, etc – see their program and compare with the SPD-program)
• the left-to-mid-wing block of SPD, GRÜNE and DIE LINKE got 57 seats against the mid-to-right-wing block of FDP and CDU which only got 53 seats in the federal parliament (Landtag) (see data-source)

So – my 2 Cents for that whole discussion:

• DIE LINKE is a legal party and from a formal viewpoint there is no reason to ignore the voices of their voters
• DIE LINKE seems to become a party which has a basis for getting above 5%, so the other parties and especially the ones in the left-middle-block should think about collaborating with them – or find good programmatic arguments why they don’t do so
• from a democrat’s viewpoint it’s strange, why some voices should just get ignored – if you think that this party is in any way illegal or unacceptable for our country: make your case – but respect voters.