Sunday, March 27, 2011

Germany: Anti-nuclear mobilization before a key vote for Merkel

Berlin Correspondent - Against the backdrop of a nuclear disaster in Japan, over two hundred thousand demonstrators across Germany have called for Saturday, March 26 closure of central Germany, on the eve of a regional election who became a plebiscite on energy policy Angela Merkel. One of the organizers, the association "Ausgestrahlt", announced that 250,000 people had marched in four German cities to demand an immediate end to the exploitation of the country's 17 nuclear reactors.

It claims that 120,000 attended the event in Berlin, police in the German capital, for its part felt that they were "over 100,000". In Munich, in the rain, police spoke of "at least 25 000 people" and the organizers 40,000, while in Hamburg and Cologne, the organizers have relied respectively 50 000 and 40 000 who have joined the word order: "Fukushima encourages us to turn off all engines.

"It is the largest demonstrations against nuclear power in Germany to date", welcomed the group of organizers in a joint statement. In a long public largely hostile to nuclear power plant disaster in Japan served as a "booster shot," says Curd Knüpfer, a student in Berlin 26 years. "The antinuclear demonstrating today did not come overnight", but Fukushima "remobilized those who had already expressed in numbers against prolonging the life of plants, where Merkel had decided," said he said.

"We must learn from Japan: nothing is impossible," for example could be read on a placard in Berlin, while a carnival float built by the Greens was a nuclear reactor tilt "in the dustbin of history ". German Chancellor had announced shortly after the disaster of Fukushima, the temporary closure of older reactors and an audit every three months on the German nuclear power stations.

But this reaction, five months after extending the life of the 17 nuclear reactors by 12 years on average, was seen as a political maneuver by a majority of Germans, according to polls. The chances of the party of Merkel's CDU, keep the head Sunday in Baden-Wurttemberg, rich Regional State in south-west, it has controlled since 1953 without interruption, have greatly diminished since.

The polls of recent days gave unanimous four to five points ahead of the Greens and the SPD against the CDU and the FDP liberals. In the regional state neighboring Rheinland-Pfalz, which also votes on Sunday, but that is no longer operating reactor, the CDU candidate who seemed able to challenge the supremacy of the Social Democratic minister president Kurt Beck, in office since 1994, saw his momentum stopped by the volte-face on nuclear Merkel.

Frédéric Lemaître

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