Source: The Local
If Berlin was not full of vacuous election posters, a foreign visitor to the city would never clock on to the fact that a German parliament will be elected in five weeks. And if, out of curiosity, the visitor was to look at these posters or, in a moment which they would later come to regret, read the election manifestos of the parties, they would wonder what this election was all about.It is certainly not about the biggest challenge facing Germany since reunification – the future of the euro and the debt crisis. Problems in the eurozone are too complex and abstract to take centre stage in this barren election campaign.Instead we have been subjected over the last few weeks to fairy tales, stories about Streusel [a type of German cake], and a wacky idea to charge foreigners to use the Autobahn.The main opposition party, the SPD, spent the weekend nostalgically celebrating their 150th birthday, with leader Peer Steinbrück and his wife Gertrud reading a fairytale to an audience of children and adults.
The only way to pump the interest in forthcoming election is the global role of Germany to which the whole nation is reluctant. International stage has exclusively been left to the US to decide. Russia moves just to show its presence. China not interested. When nation is wrapped up in a box to consider only its own matters without showing what happens elsewhere the elections have to be boring.