FrankWalter Steinmeier offers nothing radically different

The German Social Democratic Party, in point in the polls for months, torn by internal strife, regained color, Saturday in Berlin, officially adoubant Frank-Walter Steinmeier candidate at the Chancery for the legislative elections of next year, with outgoing Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The current Minister of Foreign Affairs, and fifty-two years, the most popular leaders of the SPD, served some 500 delegates, meeting in extraordinary Congress, a speech offensive close to an hour and a half, in which he urged "to put an end to discouragement, to be confident to close ranks." Clear reference to the cleavage between the reformist wing of the party, to which he belongs, and its left wing. The second criticism of the first to be endorsed, time of Gerhard Schröder, too brutal deregulation of the labour market which has, according to her, led to the extension of the precariousness. The candidate for the Chancellery, one of the leaders of those who were sometimes dubbed the "FRoGS" to "friends of gerhard schröder" was not abjured, claiming the recent and dramatic decline in unemployment as a social democratic success.

But it is especially used of the current financial crisis for low forget this very sensitive subject. Frank-Walter Steinmeier thus criticised laissez-faire and "reagano-Thatcher ideology", exclaimed "I want to put order in the relationship between politics and economy", "it is time to think otherwise, time for a new start," featuring the current return of the State, in the major economies of the world, such as a hyphenation as important as the fall of the Berlin wall. He also warned that the banks will benefit from the rescue plan in the financial sector voted the Social Democrats in the Bundestag will have to provide serious counterparties. His speech was greeted by a "standing ovation" for several minutes.

Competition from the Conservatives

However, the eleven months that remain before the legislative should not be easy for social democratic hope, a brute of work, of course, but a technocrat pure juice, never elected, who made his career in the shadow of Gerhard Schröder. If it has been designated candidate with more than 95 of the votes, Franz Müntefering, sixty-eight years, former Minister of labour, has, for its part, was elected as new boss of the SPD with 85 of the vote, a disappointing score. Many saw, already, the illustration of the reluctance of the left wing of the party. While it seeks a recovery plan to relieve the households at the time when the country almost entered into recession, Frank - Walter Steinmeier expressed more cautious, merely referring to "an umbrella for jobs, after the umbrella for banks" or targeted measures.

However the compete with conservatives already in this field. The Chancellor would be ready to allow taxpayers to deduct from their taxable income contributions to health insurance as early as 2009, be a year before the time scheduled so far. The Conservative Minister of the economy calls for increased aid for the renovation of buildings and support to the automotive industry, after the measures taken by Washington to its own constructors. Frank-Walter Steinmeier offers nothing radically different.

Moreover, the stability, after his speech, mocked the promise of the candidate not to ally with the radical left, if it won elections. Federal bodies of SPD appear indeed willing to let one of its officials be elected Minister-President of Hesse with the voices of Die Linke, the protest movement become third political force in the country in a few years. In voting intentions, the SPD was still 11 points behind on the CDU, despite a recent rebound, while the two parties were still at the elbow-to-elbow in 2005.