Final Word from Tuesday, October 1, 2002
It took Germany's Social Democrats SPD just five days to start talking about breaking their campaign promise not to raise taxes. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed out, though, that the promise wasn't written down anywhere and that for this reason the opposition would have a hard time making an issue of the government's policy reversal. Similar arguments were used in the CR when Hana Marvanová of US-DEU refused to vote for a tax increase. Her party never promised in writing not to raise taxes, some of her critics said. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder stepped in yesterday to squelch any talk of a tax hike, but some commentators suggested that other techniques would be used to achieve the same goal. Schröder, unlike Marvanová's party colleagues, is at least making a pretense of keeping his party's unwritten promise to voters.