"Berlin is poor, but sexy" - Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit
The sun god of Berlin was dethroned – kind of...
By Marek Dutschke
Klaus Wowereit, the social democrat (SPD) mayor of Berlin and shooting star of the German political scene of the past five years, just recently came close to having his career take an abrupt turn for the worse. The representatives of his own party and that of his coalition partner, the socialist party (PDS), refused to reelect him in the first round of the mayoral electoral process.
The success story which was Klaus Wowereit began in the streets of West-Berlin, where he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He escaped the poverty of his childhood by becoming a lawyer and by slowly rising through the ranks of social democratic local politics. Then five years ago Wowereit was elected mayor and he gained instant national recognition by saying “ich bin schwul und das ist gut so”, which means - it is good to be gay. The first gay mayor of Berlin could do no wrong for five years, despite being known for partying to the wee hours of the morning. He had even become a contender for being nominated the social democratic chancellor candidate.
Everything was going so well for Wowereit. His controversial coalition with the socialist party, the successor of the soviet backed social unity party (SED) which had ruled and oppressed East Germans between 1953-1990, had been able to initiate important legislative reforms. He was able to sell the coalition as a measure to unify the once divided city and that incorporating the socialist party in the government took away their ability to only offer critique and present radical proposals. His success reached its pinnacle on election day September 17th, 2006, where Wowereit's party once again received the most votes. His coalition partner on the other hand, the socialist party, which had had received over 22% five years back had to deal with almost a %10 loss, going down to 13%. King Wowereit loomed larger than ever before.
After the election Wowereit had the options of continuing the coalition with the socialist party or goning into a coalition with alliance90/The Greens, both of which would have given him a majority in the parliament. He made the controversial decision of continuing the coalition with the big losers of the election - the socialist party. This decision set up the scenario, that the social democratic party and the socialist party were in control of 76 representatives of a total of 149.
Thus came the memorable 23rd of November, at which point the 76 representatives were suppose to reelect Wowereit as Mayor. This is secret process, where each representative votes secretly in a booth. At the end of the vote Wowereit received 74 votes for him, 73 votes against him and 2 abstentions. Wowereit needed a majority of all votes, which would require 75 votes for him. It appeared that two of the representatives supposedly loyal to him, voted against him. The president of the parliament Walter Momper was so surprised that Wowereit did not receive the necessary votes, that he did not even realize it. He subsequently asked Wowereit if he accepts the vote. Wowereit replied “Yes!” and the parliament president asked him to take the oath. At that point the representatives of the opposition parties started screaming that Wowereit did not receive enough votes. Then even the elderly parliament president realized that things did not quite work out and decided upon a recess of one hour.
During the recess, the free liberal representative Martin Lindner referred to Wowereit as “Klaus Simonis”, in reference to the former social democratic party governor of Schleswig-Holstein, Heide Simonis. Heide Simonis's political career ended with losing three rounds of votes for reelection as governor, where each time she lacked one vote in order to be reelected. Simonis gave up active politics and joined a celebrity dance elimination show, where the viewers ended up voting her to the finals, despite her being the worst dancer, just to watch her make a fool of herself.
Such a fate was possibly looming for Klaus Wowereit, if he did not receive enough votes in the second round of voting. Wowereit received 75 votes in the second round and after a deep breath was finally able to take the oath, but the damage had been done. Every media outlet, reported that Wowereit had been demoted to the second tier of social democratic politicians, his aspirations for the highest positions in Germany received a harsh setback.
In the aftermath of the mayoral election process, there was a lot of speculation as to why two representatives decided not to give Wowereit their vote. The public will probably never find out who it, but why would they possibly have done it? Did they want to teach Klaus Wowereit a lesson in modesty? Wowereit had become a superstar and even more powerful as mayor since the parliament no longer voted upon his cabinet members as had been in the past, but now he could nominate his own cabinet without parliament approval. Another reason could have been discontent with Wowereit's fiscal policies. The party hard mayor of Berlin had coined the words “Berlin is sexy, but poor”. Berlin has over 60 billion euros of debt and recently the supreme court of Germany ruled that the federal government is not required to give Berlin money to alleviate their fiscal troubles. This led to Wowereit heavily criticizing several high level politicians and demanding that the federal level pay for one of Berlin's three opera houses as well as to Wowereit refusing to fund 25% of the costs of rebuilding the imperial city palace. Another plausible explanation is that someone was upset about two prominent cabinet members losing their positions.
Klaus Wowereit who took gay pride in Berlin to another level and who symbolizes the sexy and the poor of the city like no other, will take this setback as a lesson learned and move forward. I for one will not count him, when all is said and done when it comes down to deciding who will be the next chancellor of Germany.
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