ANALYSIS: Germany's Free Democrats in freefall

By Helen Maguire Dec 22, 2010, 15:00 GMT

   Berlin - While German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle holidays on Egypt's Red Sea coast, the dangers lurking in shallow waters will likely trouble him less than the sharks circling back home.

   Westerwelle, 48, departed with voices ringing in his ears for him to resign as leader of the Free Democrats (FDP) in order to give the party a fighting chance in key state elections next year.

   'I will not leave the deck during a storm,' Westerwelle retorted in a media interview. But in his absence, the criticism has refused to ebb away.  

   Since striding into office as junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat-led government last year with 14.6 per cent of the vote, the pro-business FDP has seen its approval plummet to 3 per cent in the latest opinion survey.

   If a general election were held now, this would not be enough for the party to remain in parliament.

   How did it all go so wrong?

   Westerwelle has a lot to answer for. In his 10 years at the helm of the party he has shaped the FDP in his image, promoting loyalists and entrenching his concept of free-market liberalism.

   But after entering government, the party was too enveloped in its own success to sense the changing mood, as its mantra of tax cuts and a lean state was overtaken by the realities of the economic crisis.

   'Voters soon recognized that the demands set by the FDP in their election campaign did not translate into government action,' said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University.

   Rather than adjust their rhetoric, the FDP kept going head to head with Merkel's CDU and came off worse in conflicts over tax reform, healthcare proposals and aid for debt-stricken Greece.

   'The FDP has been in government for a year, and in this time they have not managed to show their followers what purpose they exist for,' Neugebauer added.

   Westerwelle's few achievements as foreign minister, overseeing Germany's election to a 2-year rotation in the UN Security Council for example, have been overshadowed by his poor domestic record, and a string of embarrassments.

   It emerged that Westerwelle's office manager was the mole who supplied insider information to the US Embassy, splashed to the world in diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. A visa bribery scandal at German embassies could damage him further.

   FDP members are beginning to panic as they look towards 2011, when seven of Germany's 16 states go to the polls. Westerwelle has made clear that he has no plans to step aside ahead of the FDP party conference in May, when a leadership vote could force him out.

   Four state elections are scheduled before May, in Hamburg, Saxony- Anhalt, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Opinion polls indicate that the FDP will fail to enter parliament in the latter two states.  

  If this is the case, the pressure would be immense for Westerwelle to accept the consequences and 'focus on being foreign minister,' as one internal FDP critic euphemistically proposed.

   Within the party however, there are no clear contenders who could take over from Westerwelle in time to restore the FDP's credibility before the first nof the state elections in February.

   The party's deputy leader, Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle, 65, certainly has the experience. Yet many consider him to be too closely associated with the current regime, and unable to renew the party.

   At the other end of the spectrum, Health Minister Philipp Roesler, 37, and the party's general secretary Christian Lindner, 31, have been named as contenders capable of rejuvenating the FDP.

   Both have expressed their loyalty to Westerwelle - unsurprisingly, as they would have much to lose by seizing the party reins at such troublesome times, and can afford to sit out the storm.

   The FDP's erosion in state elections will make it harder for Merkel's government to push through reform in the upper house of parliament, or Bundesrat, where Germany's 16 states can veto proposed legislation.

   Yet Merkel could also benefit, as all parties jostle for their starting lineup ahead of the next general election in 2013.

   A weakened FDP would increase the CDU's standing within the coalition, if they emerge from next year's string of elections as the only party with a solid base of voter legitimacy.

   Upon return from his seaside holiday, Westerwelle's first appointment is an annual FDP summit on January 6, when he will face up to his critics with a keynote speech likely to repeat the pledge he made when he became party leader in 2001.

   'On every ship that's steaming and sailing there's one who does the regulating - and that's me,' Westerwelle quipped at the time.