FDP madness

Since my last post about the FDP (liberal democrats) still holds the record for highest number of hits, I’ll try with another one.

Imagine you are a political party.

Let’s say, after an election five parties pass the five-percent-hurdle, and you get the 4th most votes. Let’s pretend you receive 8% of the votes, and the other parties 35%, 35%, 12%, 6%.

Let’s continue this line of thought. You’re a party in a democracy, in which people vote in free elections. 13% of the people decided to vote for you. 87% decided not to vote for you. That’s something, I guess.

Now, one 36% and the 12% party decide to build a coalition, but don’t reach the necessary 51% of all votes. Therefore they decide to talk to both small parties – to you, and also to the 6% party – in order to see if maybe a three-party-coalition could work.

What would you say?

“I am only going to meet you and talk to you if you promise not to talk to the 6% party”.

No wait, that doesn’t make any sense. You most probably would not say that. As the SZ put it yesterday, this would be like being unemployed, calling a possible employer on the phone and telling him that you will only meet up for a job interview if he’s not going to invite other applicants.

Alas, this is exactly what the FDP did yesterday. After SPD & the Green Party decided to talk to both them and the Left Party (which is the only reasonable thing to do in a democracy), the FDP said they will not even bother meeting up to talk about a coalition, because SPD & the Green Party are also going to talk to “a party which is a communist enemy of the state”.

What?! I mean, seriously?!

I’m not a big friend of the Left Party, but 6% of the population voted for them! In case you neither understand democracy nor maths … you are to respect the results of free elections (may I remind you that your name is “Free Democratic Party”), and 6% is only 2% less than you funny guys from the FDP received.

Are you saying that 6% of the people are communist enemies of the state? Is that it?

You know what I would say? I’d say:
“Hey, this is a democracy. We received 8%. We have good ideas, and it would be a good thing for the country if we would govern it. So we want to convince you to build a coalition with us, not the other party. We have the better arguments. Meet us both, and we’ll show you.”

As fefe usually puts it: “who voted for the FDP again at the last elections?”

Seriously, pull yourself together. I hope you’ll never do that again. It really cannot get any more disrespectful towards the German people.

( — Source: WDR )
( — Edit: numbers corrected )