A Man Sees Red — Page 3:
11 Even before the election, the big coalition was an option. But no one even would have dreamed of still questioning Merkel's chancellery had the CDU won. The only question seemed to be: Which man is self-assured and relaxed enough to be her vice? But now, the falling tyrant has managed to destablized her, too, and this cannot be entirely unwelcome to the various would-be chancellors in her own ranks.
12 No, there is no point in mincing matters any longer. Germany does not seem to be ready for a chancelloress - sixty years after Hitler and eighty-seven years after the establishment of women's suffrage, the people have elected her, but the majority of those in power are far from granting a woman the highest state office. They might not put it past her, but they will never grant it to her.
13 The chancellor's wife, his master's voice, found her husband's behaviour on election night "suboptimal," as the outgoing chancellor by his own grace revealed in front of TV cameras. He has become used to taking private matters for state affairs. The role of female politicians in this male poker is sub-minimal. Except for one. And that's why she has to go. It is not without tragic intent that the candidate has always maintained that "it does not matter that I am a woman." Despite various similar experiences, she did not expect such a crude attack. I admit: Even I had not expected it in such an uninhibited manner. Not any more.
14 In 2005, we witness the attempt of a parting chancellor to disavow in public his designated female successor in a manner which he would have spared his toughest male political enemy - and which this enemy would not have accepted either. Undeniably, Schröder's motive is contempt, even hatred of the woman who might be a match for him.
15 If I had asked myself questions before the elections, because both big parties' cold-hearted election campaigns, entirely oblivious to women, were not particularly inviting - something has become clear since the violent appearance of the tyrant on election night: Germany urgently needs a chancelloress! Whatever she would do - she would never behave like this. Not the woman who "modestly took note of the voters' will." Therefore, no one else but her would now be the real system change.
First published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (25.09.05) and EMMA / Nr. 6 November/December 2005 ("Ein Mann sieht rot")
© Alice Schwarzer (www.emma.de, www.aliceschwarzer.de)