(Germany): With criticism rising, Schröder warns against party division

[Dirk39]

"BERLIN Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned left-wing Social Democrats on Sunday against forming a new party, amid growing complaints that the governing coalition is abandoning Germany's workers and its poor.
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"It is not compatible with membership of the SPD for anyone, as an SPD member, to call for something else to be done or to be founded." Schröder said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio station. "That will be made clear."
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Two groups have emerged that could challenge the SPD's dominance of the left in German politics as disquiet grows over Schröder's "Agenda 2010" reform package, which will cut jobless benefits and pensions and has already increased health costs.
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A citizens group formed on March 5, Election Alternative, says its wants to offer an electable alternative to the center-left government, which it says has deceived the people with its reform program. Die Welt newspaper said Saturday that a trade union coalition, including two board members of the giant electrical engineering union IG Metall, also wanted to form a new party to challenge the social cuts Schröder has initiated."
more:

http://www.iht.com/articles/510183.html

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Just Me]

1. Seems people all over the world want something closer to "center".

Know what I mean? :hi:

[AP]

2. I wonder if the NED has projects in Germany.

[Dirk39]

4. I hope they have not...

Me, I hope that there will be a new party. Somewhere in Europe, the neoliberal consent has to be attacked. Schröder in a way is worse than Blair and the DLC. In Germany the corporatists and the most influential right-wing daily newspaper have managed to let Schröder win two times.

Their strategy was: let the "social-democrats" do the dirty work for us. If the conservative party wins, there will be riots and fights...

Schröders programm is written by member of the executive board of VW, Daimler and Deutsche Bank.
The SPD has abandonned the unions completely, as it was happening in Great Britain after Blair took over. Labour was financed 90% by the unions before Blair, not it's financed 90% by corporatist lobbies.

I was a member of the Greens when I was 17 and left them about 23 years ago and stopped voting after the Greens and the SPD supported the Kosovo-war.

Maybe I become some kind of party-member again?

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Kellanved]

3. you have to explain one thing to me:

Why is this news? This has been the Party policy for almost 100 years :shrug: now. It might not be one of the SPD's finer traits, but to claim that this is some new phenomenon is one of the German media's lower points. "Wer hat uns verraten, ...", a #1 hit for 85 straight years :eyes:.

[Dirk39]

5. The situation is completely different now...

Never before in the history of socialdemocratic parties, they let VW, Deutsche Bank and BMW directly write their programs. The complete absence of any democatic process withing Schröders' party is simply disgusting.
One SPD guy commented a few days ago, if people don't find another answer to the "social question" than Blair, Schröder and the neolibiral market-fundamentalism, we will enter a century of violence. And I think, if Europeans let the german and french imperialism raise it's ugly head again, we will see things happening much worse than during the 20th century.
And never before in their history, they've lost so many members and voters and the union with the labour-unions. Don't you think that this is at least the biggest crisis in their history? Even if you don't share my leftist attitude at all?
Dirk