After securing the most seats in Germany's federal election on Sunday, 26 September, Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Olaf Scholz has announced that his party is willing to join the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Green Party in forming a Bundestag coalition to govern the country.
In a press conference on Monday, the SPD candidate for chancellor said that "the voters have made themselves very clear", and because the Greens and the FDP had won a significant amount of new votes in the 2021 election, the three parties had "a visible mandate that the citizens of this country have formulated", reported The Guardian.
The Green Party's vote share increased by 5.9 percent, higher than the SPD's 5.2 percent increase in vote share from the previous election. The upswing of FDP's vote share was 0.8 percent.
The Greens and the FDP are the kingmakers of this election, as they could also join a coalition led by the Christian Democrats (a political alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union) who finished second behind the SPD.
However, this outcome is unlikely because emerging second-best from the elections cannot be perceived as a people's mandate to lead the government. It is unlikely, but not impossible.
In the 1976 West Germany elections, the CDU/CSU was the single-largest party, with Helmut Kohl as the candidate for the top job. But it was the SPD’s Helmut Schmidt, whose party came second, who retained his post as chancellor after forming a coalition the FDP.
Regardless of the final outcome, one thing is for certain - coalition talks will take weeks, if not months. The cautious negotiations that will occur in the upcoming weeks will aim at satisfying all coalition partners in policy issues and cabinet appointments.
(With inputs from The Guardian)
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