KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Never was Germany's opposition at the same time so diversified and so small -- it will have the difficult job of playing the parliamentary watchdog while resisting future coalition flirtations.
It was a sign how unwelcome the new kid on the block really is: When Germany's Bundestag, the lower house of parliament assembled for the first time earlier this week, most of Germany's 614 lawmakers refused to accept a left-wing politician as the deputy parliamentary speaker. Lothar Bisky, party chief of the new Left Party, failed to get elected even after three successive tries. For the last of these, he needed only a simple majority. The session ended unexpectedly as a seemingly irritated conservative Norbert Lammert -- who just a few hours ago had been elected the new parliamentary president -- gave his lawmakers "time to rethink their voting behavior."
The new session won't reconstitute until November, but Left Party politicians, who were rather shocked when Lammert announced the vote against Bisky, have already started to direct feisty remarks at the political establishment.
"We're not going to drop Mr. Bisky now, and we'll have all the patience we need to see him through," Gregor Gysi, the party's figurehead in the East, told German television. "Now they shall vote until he is elected, that you can believe me."
The new Left Party is one of three factions that form the opposition to a possible center-left/center-right grand coalition under the leadership of Christian Democrat Angela Merkel. It is made up of successor to East Germany's Communist Party and western German Social Democrats disgruntled with outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's labor and welfare reforms. The party got over 8 percent of the vote in last month's general elections -- making it the fourth-largest party in parliament.
The opposition team is completed by the pro-market Free Democratic Party, and the Green Party that has to adapt to being on the other side of the agenda after seven years in government with outgoing the Social Democrats.
While the Greens and the FDP have long been established, the new Left Party is a parliamentary newcomer. Under the leadership of Gisy and former SPD strongman Oskar Lafontaine, one of Gerhard Schroeder's fiercest enemies since he fell out with the chancellor in 1999, the leftists exponentially increased their Bundestag presence: From two to 54 seats.
"The Left Party does not enjoy the same status in the Bundestag," Ruediger Schmitt-Beck, political expert at Duisburg University, told United Press International in a telephone interview on Thursday. "You don't have to form a coalition with it. But at the same time I see no reason to brand her an extremist party. The Left Party is being scorned."
That's also a nice word for mobbed, which might have happened to Bisky, who has come under fire for what his critics say was all-too-close relations with the Staatssicherheitsdienst, or Stasi, the interior intelligence service of the former communist regime. Bisky, however, has said he would be ready to have his Stasi file re-examined.
While the bickering surrounding Bisky is likely to continue until next month, all three parties will have a difficult time forming a strong opposition, observers say.
FDP, Left Party and Greens have a combined 166 seats -- that's 27 percent of the votes. Not enough to push through individual appeals, such as calling for an extraordinary parliamentary session, to which 30 percent is needed. And don't even take the 166 seats as a group, experts say: The parliamentary opposition ranges from far-left to pro-market, with the relatively centrist Greens, the smallest faction, in danger of getting crushed in between.
"The three factions have totally different agendas and usually don't steer a common course," Schmitt-Beck said. "The government holds 73 percent of the Bundestag, while the opposition is very weak and will not be able to enforce policies."
Their agenda spreads from radically simplifying Germany's fiscal system and fostering stronger ties with the United States (FDP) to curbing money from the rich and calling home all German soldiers in U.N.-mandated peacekeeping missions.
The leftists, who have vowed to become a "true opposition party," are likely to keep that promise. They are not even close to forming a coalition with any of the major parties, while FDP and Greens have been repeatedly courted in recent weeks, when the country was gripped by political insecurity after the inconclusive Sept. 18 elections.
While the FDP has always said it would rather join the Merkel party to form a reform-oriented alliance, voters have handed that option a clear "no." That doesn't mean, however, that the future has no different coalitions in store. The Greens and the FDP could play a major role, as they are able to either open the door to a political coalition with the conservatives or the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer, Germany's outgoing foreign minister, was the biggest hurdle to overcome for teaming up with the Merkel party, but he has retreated to the political back benches of politics, handing the party leadership to Renate Kuenast and Fritz Kuhn. The new Greens might be ready, in a year or two, to team up with Merkel's conservatives and the FDP on a federal level, Schmitt-Beck said.
"The Greens are more versatile now," he said. "Since the elections, they have turned into a rather centrist party that could play the tip on the scale to the left or the right."
