Some Remarks From Germany - Three Days Before National Ge...

At the time being, the German government chaired by Chancellor Angela Merkel is formed as a grand coalition set up by the Christian Democratic Party (CDU, entire Germany except Bavaria) together with the Christian Social Union (CSU, Bavaria only), on the one hand, and the Social Democrats (SPD), on the other hand.

There appears to be some support for an assumption saying that, after four years of joint Government, the grand coalition is severely worn out and should be replaced by something better.

But by what sort of new majority? Those leaning to the centre-right in the political spectrum might prefer to see a coalition formed by the CDU together with the Liberal Democrats (FDP, Freie Demokratische Partei). Left-leaning voters surely would reject such thinking, preferring a coalition formed by the SPD together with the Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) plus the Leftist Party (Die Linke), the letter being a conglomerate having absorbed the political successors of the SED (former state party of the German Democratic Republic). Apart from the problem that top candidates from SPD have pledged they won't form any sort of coalition with the Leftist Party on federal level, recent polls suggest that both political blocks - say: CDU plus CSU plus FDP versus SPD plus Bündnis90/Die Grünen plus Die Linke - are approximately at the same level of strength.

Perhaps Germany will end up after the voting day with the next grand coalition because of a centre-right coalition has not won a majority and the left-leaning coalition does not come into being due to all sorts of political disharmony.

And then there are the individuals having the right to vote. Recent polls suggest that the turnout might be at a record low. And, at the time being, a stunning 35% share of potential voters say they are still undecided.

Hence, at the time being I think it is safe to say that any prognosis of the outcome is difficult, if not outright impossible.

When the election campaign was planned earlier this year, all of the well-established political parties as mentioned above thought about including an Internet-based component like that which had empowered Barack Obama in the United States to win the Presidency.

However, all such efforts have proven to be futile. In Germany, the political elite is still organised in a system of political parties which are internally structured by a very conservative network glued together by hierarchy, control and loyalty. To conduct an Internet-based campaign means structurally accepting the active involvement of the masses, inherently including a significant loss of hierarchical control. The German top candidates and their party support staff, at their top very prominently also Ms Merkel of CDU as well as Mr Steinmeier of SPD, outrightly rejected any suggestion to allow the potential voters to use Internet-based technology as a channel for sending questions and messages right into their headquarters for having some sort of meaningful dialogue. Allowing this sort of a two-way communication had been the secret of the success of Mr Obama in the United States. Instead, German top brass attempted to reduce YoutTube and the like to some sort of alternative digital broadcasting stations and social networking websites to technical means for rendition of their old one-way propaganda. Of course, such doing was doomed to fail, and the overall result was embarrassing. With regard to the grey shades, the Greens did it a little better than other parties but I can't say that we have seen any meaningful digital campaign so far in Germany.

Not only did the political elite not make appropriate use of the Internet when running the campaign, a lot of politicians tried to gain votes from analogue Luddites by demanding some ever stricter regulation of the Internet.

In the analogue campaign, in particular CDU, CSU, and SPD went at great lengths to avoid any thorough discussion of relevant political topics, like tax politics, how to regulate the financial sector, and the like, during the campaign in fear of horrifying their (potential) voters.

So, Germany is a technophobe democracy, sleepy, unresponsively, lethargically and apathetically moving in a semi-conscious mood towards the election day?

Well, there appears to be a problem with such assumption.

A significant portion of the Digital Natives, aged between 18 and 30, is amidst a breathtaking process of political self-organisation, leading to the formation of the Piratenpartei, the German Pirate Party. I had already reported on that issue e.g. here, here, and there. They are masterly utilising the Internet will all its options.

The polls still say they might get way less than 5% of the votes, the quorum necessary for winning any seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament. But, if a significant portion of the still undecided 35% group should decide to cast a protest vote in favour of the Piratenpartei, or if it turns out that the polls have been distorted e.g. by the fact that many Piratenpartei voters can't be reached for a poll via a conventional land-line - the standard way to conduct such polls - because of they only own a mobile phone, then Germany might face a political earthquake, overnight having some 30 Piratenpartei MPs, the equivalent of a 5% of share in votes, sitting in the Berlin Reichstag building. It is not much likely, I'm inclined to say, but it still can't be entirely excluded.

Recently, the reception of the advent of the Piratenpartei in the mainstream media has changed significantly. Some weeks ago, leading broadsheets had ignored this new party or had sketched those activists as some sort of lunatic morons. Last week, Mr Schirrmacher, distinguished co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has taken up the cudgels for the new social movement behind the Piratenpartei. And German TV now appears to report Piratenpartei issues far more regularly than ever before. And some PR experts have explained that the campaign directors of the established parties are already thrown into panic by those new generation of digital activists. The fear is not only to lose some percentage at one of the fringes of the political spectrum; it is about the outlook of losing an entire young generation.

As a German citizen well interested in politics and contemporary history one might get the overall impression that something really big is going on without knowing what will breed out at the end.

It is true that at the time being the campaign is centered around topics in the context of general Internet utilisation in politics, opening up the political system, and preserving civil liberties. This, taken alone, were by no means bad news for IP people.

However, a few days ago I went through the various lists of candidates of the Piratenpartei, Bundesland by Bundesland, only to discover that many of them have previously been active in the movement against patentability of computer-implemented inventions, or, if you prefer, software patents. However, I could not find any of the anchormen of that campaign, like Mr Pilch of FFII, on those lists.

At least since the EU conference finalising the Lisbon Agenda, German politicians are used to pay lip-service to the advancement of the so-called knowledge economy on a regular basis. But broader parts of the German middle classes over 30 years of age are facing the digital revolution scared and with fear in their eyes. They feel that their traditional skills originating in the good old analogue age will get devalued rapidly, and those folks appear not to be that much eager to sit down and learn what would be needed today. This kind of backward orientation can be observed since the 70s of the past century well before the Internet become popular; even the 'traditional IT' of those times was discussed by broad circles mostly as a source of unemployment and trouble, not as a historical chance. If Germany ever wants to thrive again, it will probably be necessary to politically overcome this kind of demeanour of obstruction even if this means to de-throne some of the Luddism-prone members of the elites currently running the country, who are sometimes openly preening themselves by stating that they feel not to be in any need to learn coping with the digital age.

Now, under this perspective, the Piratenpartei people have a true head start in bringing us closer to the digital knowledge-based economy over and over cited in crowd-pleasing speeches of politicians of the established parties. However, they are still utterly inexperienced in the day-to-day political routine business and they might turn out to be prone to some hubris when judging on patent law and politics. A lot of trouble may lie ahead of IP people. It is a pity that the long overdue shake-up of the German society apparently comes as a double-pack with some obscure politics of anti-patent resentment pickaback.

Time will tell.