Erik Kirschbaum: Germany’s king maker party now a laughing stock

In a new hit German comedy film about how men make fools of themselves in pursuit of women, the worst insult comes from a 30-year-old venting anger at a rival.

“You FDP voter you!” shouts the character, spitting out the initials of the Free Democratic Party with such disdain it has audiences rolling with laughter from the Black Forest to the Baltic.

There is no more telling illustration of the party’s stunning fall than seeing its initials used as an insult in the box office hit Maennerherzen 2 – Men in the City 2 – watched by about 500,000 people when it opened last weekend.

The FDP has been the junior coalition partner to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives since 2009. Its weakness is now destabilising her government before the 2013 federal election.

“It is without doubt the most difficult situation the FDP has ever been in,” said party chairman Philippe Roesler after the party suffered a humiliating defeat in a regional election in Berlin on Sunday – plunging to a record low of 1.8 per cent.

Long Germany’s king-maker, the FDP has been a partner in more post-war governments than any other party. It has spent 43 of the last 63 years in coalitions with either Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats or the centre-left Social Democrats.

But now the FDP, a centrist party that supports free markets and liberal views, has crashed towards oblivion with a string of defeats in regional elections. This year it failed to clear the 5 per cent hurdle for seats in five of seven state assemblies up for the vote.

Sometimes disparaged as “the party of doctors and dentists” because of its lobbying for those and other special interests, the FDP fell to a new low on Sunday in the Berlin regional election. This has provoked soul-searching among activists but also spawned jokes outside about its demise.

Pundits noted that the number of invalid ballots in the Berlin election (26,000) was nearly as high as the FDP’s total (27,000). Interest in the FDP was so miniscule that the party held the final campaign rally in Berlin inside its headquarters in front of a handful of spectators. “Dear FDP – please do us all a favour and disappear,” said stand-up comic Ades Zabel on a social networking site. “You’re not needed any more. We can’t stand you any more.”

A popular song called Ich habe nie FDP gewaehlt (I never voted FDP) is the ironic chronicle of a man who says he made many mistakes in his life but at least he never voted FDP.

The fall is all the more spectacular because just two years ago, the FDP had its best general election result - 14.6 per cent. Since then the FDP, which once billed itself as the Partei der Besserverdiener – higher earners’ party – has plunged to between 3 and 4 per cent in national opinion polls.

“In the eight regional elections since the 2009 federal election, the FDP has lost more than-two thirds of the voters it had in 2009,” said Manfred Guellner, managing director of the Forsa polling institute.

“Never before in post-war history has a party fallen out of favour as much as the FDP. In Berlin, the FDP got eight of 100 eligible voters in the 2009 federal election but on Sunday only one of 100 eligible voters.”

The FDP is disliked by many because of its focus on the interests of the well-to-do. It pushed through a special cut in value added tax for hotel owners two years ago even though it had campaigned for tax equality, and has been pummeled in the media for this ever since.

Pollsters say voters disliked the ineffective leadership and abrasive style of the FDP’s recently removed chairman, foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, as well as policy lurches this year in a desperate bid to win back voters.

Many blame Mr Westerwelle for isolating Germany in the international community with its abstention in the UN Security Council vote authorising military action on Libya. They also were taken aback by Mr Roesler’s dabbling in euroscepticism last week on the eve of the Berlin election.

“The FDP has truly made horrible mistakes – lobbying on tax policies, Westerwelle being miscast as foreign minister and a whole lot more,” wrote the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an editorial.

“But right now the FDP is being blamed for everything that’s wrong with the world. The party is so badly damaged that it’s hard to imagine how they’re going to continue governing this country to the next election in 2013.”