Opinion: German Conservatives - Evil Panic

This year, the German conservatives of chancellor Angela Merkel did not take too much of the new year's time to unleash a fireworks of politicking upon the German elector.

With decisions looming, amongst others, in the German key state of Hesse, Merkel's party looks set to being unable to transform the chancellor's personal popularity (inexplicable to the author) into results. Merkel's party sitting state governor, Roland Koch, seems to be set for an unpleasant surprise in the upcoming state election. What had worked for Koch once before was what some called a xenophobic smut campaign, four years ago. In a 'popular ballot', Koch and his party collected signatures against foreign immigration. The scheme worked, Koch became state governor.

This year, not much new in Germany, no creative approach from Koch either. Same topic, same style, assisted by some media hype.

For some weeks, occasional violent attacks have been taking place on passengers of German subway systems. The pattern was similar in each of these incidents: Third generation immigrant youngsters of southern European or Anatolian descent beat half dead innocent standers by. The facts are there, not to be contested.

What makes the aftermath of these attacks politically interesting for the observer is the campaign that infamous Koch has embarked on spearheading against such crimes. This time, Koch was quick to publish a pseudo mosaic list of decent German values and behavior that foreigners must adhere to in his view - and promptly drew harsh criticism for indecency by the German Protestant Church.

This week, nolens volens or not, chancellor Merkel took sides with campaigning Koch and advocated stricter laws for adolescent perpetrators. Other states, such as conservative ruled Northrhine Westphalia, unveiled plans for the introduction of boot camps.

It is indeed hard to overlook the element of hipocrisy in the conservatives' populist stance, given some background facts to this debate:

• Germany has consistently been scoring badly in OECD sponsored reviews of its educational system. In few other, if any, industrialized country is the correlation between access to higher education and parent income higher than in Germany.

• Under the conservative dominated grand coalition government with an all but paralysed social democrat partner laws have been enacted, systematically favoring wealthy households in education through tax breaks, at the cost of lower income households.

• Drastic hikes in VAT taxation under the sitting federal government has furthter eroded spending power for low income families. Shedding aligator tears in a new year's radio address, conservative Northrhine Westphalia state governor, Jürgen Rüttgers lamented the fact that according to recent statistics around 25 per cent of German children (presumedly, this includes immigrant children on German soil) are threatened by poverty.

Given the backdrop against which the conservative campaigners unfold their argument, many of the symptomps they seek to heal in a populist fashion seem to be homebred.

Whether one would call that smut, bad taste or simply hipocrisy, possibly is up to individual taste. The German Protestant Church, off all, doesn't seem to be far off the mark.