analysis
Status: 02/27/2023 5:53 p.m
Franziska Giffey’s political future is hanging by a thread. In Berlin, the SPD is a hair’s breadth ahead of the Greens. If Giffey does not remain Governing Mayor, her steep political career is likely to be over.
She’s doing what a governing mayor has to do after an election. Franziska Giffey governs, represents and explores. She sits for seven and a half hours with the old and perhaps new coalition partners, the Greens and the Left. The round with the CDU is hardly shorter. In the evening, the ruler stands on the red carpet of the Berlinale. Oh yes, and the Senate is still in session and then there is the summit against youth violence.
Even in normal times, politics is a tough job. This is even more true during and after the election campaign, especially when there is so much uncertainty. Two weeks after the memorable repeat election, it has not yet been decided who will govern the city with whom and what will become of the woman in the Red City Hall. “We are probing with an open mind,” Giffey describes the state of uncertainty. Just as open as the coalition question is what will become of it.
All or nothing
The official end result is now available with the SPD having a mini lead of 53 votes over the Greens. But for the former district mayor of Neukölln, the former federal minister for family affairs and incumbent governing mayor, it is politically all or nothing.
Because: The Social Democrats could still lose the Red City Hall after more than 20 years. And the opposition role is not excluded either. If that happens, dams that have held up so far will break in the party. And Giffey might get carried away.
However, the best of all scenarios has happened for the Governing Mayor with this official end result: Nothing changes in the order of the parties: SPD in second place, the Greens in third place. Giffey can continue to maintain her claim to the office of Governing Mayor. “I came to stay,” she said during the election campaign.
Anyone watching the Governing Mayoress might well get the idea that one has found her dream job here. Giffey would have to continue the red-green-red coalition for this, even if it is not their heart alliance.
“majority is majority”
The situation would have been very different if the SPD had had to settle for third place. Red-Green-Red could have continued as Green-Red-Red in this case. In line with political practice, the Greens would have had the Red City Hall as the strongest force.
The green top candidate, Bettina Jarasch, was aiming for exactly that during the election campaign and provocatively posed the question: “Can the SPD also become a junior partner?”
This question no longer arises for Giffey and the SPD – at least not in this constellation. Especially since the green front woman Jarasch already signaled: “Majority is majority.” Even if it’s only 53 votes.
An alliance with the CDU?
The strategists of all parties, on the other hand, are following the intellectual games of older Berlin Social Democrats with great interest, although they no longer have any offices or functions. They more or less clearly recommend their party to enter into an alliance with the CDU.
Politically, there would certainly be intersections in a black-red constellation. The two top people are not far apart in terms of content either. Neither Franziska Giffey nor Kai Wegner believe in significantly reducing car traffic. Both agree that the expropriation of large housing groups is the wrong way.
But could Giffey see herself working as a super senator under Governing Mayor Kai Wegner? There is only silence from social democrats to this question.
But even if Giffey could imagine himself politically and personally black and red: The Berlin SPD would be difficult to force into this most unloved of all possible constellations. Rather, a chain reaction in the party threatens to turn in the direction of the grand coalition.
Tensed silence after the election defeat
It is noticeable that in the Berlin SPD, which is always open to discussion, there is a tense silence after the historic defeat in the elections. The district chairman of the SPD in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Kian Niroomand, briefly ventured out of cover with the call for a “fresh start”. But Niroomand was promptly recaptured by the party leadership.
Others wondered whether it would not be better to renew themselves in opposition after this election result. There is no broad public support for it, let alone uproar in the party.
“We want peace so that the red-green-red alliance can be renewed,” said one who is well acquainted with the party soul and the power structure and is not one of the supporters of the state chairmen and governing mayoress.
Conversely, this means that if Giffey were to take the path towards the CDU or if the SPD ultimately had to go into the opposition, the calm would suddenly be over. Conflicts that are now being laboriously kept under the rug would erupt in the open. The left in the SPD would then rebel against Giffey’s party rights.
Giffey’s uncertain future
Giffey herself has not yet commented on what she would do if she could no longer serve as Governing Mayor. “Oh, you know, I don’t concern myself with that,” she always said during the election campaign.
That’s typical Giffey: stay optimistic and keep your sights set on the “Red Town Hall” goal. But if things turn out differently, for example if the Greens forge an alliance with the CDU, bypassing the SPD, Giffey’s days as state chairman of the Berlin SPD are likely to be numbered.