Bad reviews

The new German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel could hardly have feared worse reviews on its first 100 days in office. Not a single major newspaper could muster a kind assessment, and some have been merciless. Squabbling, indecisive, and naïve fairly sums up the opinion of most political commentators, and they also agree on who to blame: the Free Democratic Party led by Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Guido Westerwelle, the party regarded as the big winners of last September's election.

"With an election result of more than 14 percent, the FDP suddenly had big hopes to fulfil," says the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. "And they are not up to it yet." The successful election campaign seemed to promise that the FDP would establish itself outside its traditional voter base. But it is "squandering its opportunity permanently," the paper says. As for Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, they are desperate "not to be seen as the neo-liberal spectre that the opposition made them out to be before the election."

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung uses a botanical metaphor to illustrate its thoughts on the new government. The national paper likens the constantly squabbling leaders of Merkel's allies - Westerwelle and Christian Social Union leader Horst Seehofer - to the mimosa, a prickly, sensitive plant that closes rapidly when touched or shaken. "Angela Merkel is in charge of a mimosa coalition," the paper concludes. "We've seen the husk. It's time for the fruit."

Several papers have noted that the last government, a coalition of the center-right CDU and the center-left Social Democratic Party, seemed to function much better, despite being considered at the time as an unworkable marriage of convenience. As Munich tabloid Abendzeitung says, "many think back to it with nostalgia." The combination of CDU and FDP only seems to work at a state level, the paper argues.

The Cologne-based Koelnische Rundschau also compares this coalition unfavourably to its predecessors, particularly as the CDU and the FDP went into the last election as declared allies. "The SPD/Green alliance was unprepared in 1998, and the CDU and the SPD could not bring themselves to trust each other in 2005," the paper says, "But the CDU and the FDP do not give the impression that they want to work together." "What do the CDU and FDP want?" the paper asks.

But perhaps the bluntest assessment came from the Berliner Zeitung, and was aimed specifically at Westerwelle's party: "They can't do it. They are unfit to govern. Angela Merkel has brought an unpredictable, chaotic bunch into the cabinet. Angela Merkel is governing with people who are in political puberty. If they don't grow up soon, we have another 1,360 days of hysterics and wrong decisions to look forward to."

bk/dpa
Editor: Rob Turner