: There's A Wind Blowing Up North
Security was an absolute priority when President Bush visited Germany last week, says Trevor Salisbury. Shops were forced to close. People living along the route of the President's motorcade had to either clean their garages out and leave the doors open or risk having them sealed by security forces. And Frankfurt airport was temporaily shut down.
Welcome to this week's column which comes to you from a very wintry Germany which resulted in Munich Airport almost coming to a standstill at the beginning of the week (it was not the only airport but more about that later).
Here in Germany, elections are always held on a Sunday and last Sunday (20 February), it was the turn of those living in the most northerly state, Schleswig-Holstein, which is separated from Denmark by a stretch of water which can be comfortably crossed in 35 minutes by taking the ferry from Puttgarden.
It was time to vote for the Laender Parliament in order to decide whether the current Minister President, the Social Democrat Heide Simonis was to remain in office for the next 5 years, or whether she would be ousted our by Harry Carstens from the Conservative Christian Democrats.
In a very close run race, the Christian Democrats and their traditional allies, the Federal Democrats (FDP), lost by one seat but this also meant that Heide Simonis did not have an absolute majority so that she had to search for coalition partners It is looking as if she will remain in office with the Green Party, tolerated by the SSW, a party which represents the Danish minority in Schleswig-Holstein.
The interesting thing here is that a party must normally bag at least 5% of the votes to count but for some unknown reason, the SSW is exempted from this rule, so that they can tolerate the red-green coalition (as it is referred to here) although they only got 3.6% of the votes.
It would however appear that some unknown person is not in favour of the SSW support as the main candidate has received death threats, she having to be provided with police protection.
On an international note, George Bush paid Germany a visit on Wednesday which resulted in claims for compensation being asserted by both Lufthansa and shopkeepers in the town of Mainz where he met Mr Schroeder. The powers that be decided that security was an absolute priority and even forced those people of Mainz who lived along the route being driven along by the US President to either clear their garages out and leave the doors open or risk having them sealed by the security forces.
Shops were forced to close because the route was sealed off, resulting in the local inhabitants not being able to reach the shops and Frankfurt airport was even temporarily closed resulting in Lufthansa having to cancel flights incurring losses which they now want back from the Government.
It also gives rise to the question as to why Mr Bush had to land at Frankfurt Airport anyway. He could also have landed at Ramstein, a short distance away and would not have been the cause of such disruption.
That is all for this week but if you have any comments to make or would like to get in touch, just drop me a line.
Auf Wiedersehen until next week
