VZCZCXRO7624
PP RUEHAG RUEHDF RUEHIK RUEHLZ RUEHPOD RUEHSL RUEHYG
DE RUEHMZ #0234/01 2460811
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 030811Z SEP 09
FM AMCONSUL MUNICH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4910
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUCNMEU/EU INTEREST COLLECTIVE
RUCNFRG/FRG COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MUNICH 000234 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV EUN GM
SUBJECT:  Bored To Tears - German Election Leaves Bavarian Youth 
Cold 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (SBU) Bavarian youth and German youth in general were intrigued 
this past year with "Obamamania" and the workings of the 2008 U.S. 
presidential campaign and elections that inspired young and old to 
discuss politics in ways not seen in Bavaria for years.  However, 
despite the prominence in Germany this fall of important social and 
political themes such as addressing the economic crisis and whether 
to close down nuclear power facilities, it seems that the September 
27 Bundestag elections have failed to capture the imaginations of 
Bavaria's youth.  Although Minister President Horst Seehofer has 
worked to "rejuvenate" his Christian Social Union (CSU), even 
students officially associated with the CSU seem disengaged.  End 
Summary. 
 
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Major Themes Do Not Resonate Among Students 
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¶2.  (SBU) Informal talks with groups of Bavarian students that the 
Consulate undertook recently revealed that, among our informal 
sample at least, Bavarian students were to politics.  This held true 
even for the Bavarian Junge Union (JU), the youth wing of the major 
Bavarian party, the CSU, whose leadership met with the Consul 
General and Pol/Econ and Public Affairs sections on August 19. 
Although the JU delegation expected a "nearly certain" positive 
outcome for the CDU/CSU, they were surprisingly ill-informed about 
German and world politics.  They also confessed that they were not 
using social networking media tools such as Twitter or Facebook. 
The JU students complained that their peers had no time to debate 
campaign issues seriously, or if they did, they were still not 
interested in stumping for the CSU.  The only topic of interest to 
students, they told us, was the question of university fees.  This 
has not surfaced as an issue in the national election campaign. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Likewise, contacts in the SPD youth organization "JUSOs" 
confirmed the relative indifference among that set of students to 
the current campaigns.  We found that they had little interest in 
the SPD party program itself; rather, students reported that their 
peers were interested in the "star power" of politicians and the 
cache that comes from direct, personal contact with them. 
 
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Social Networking and Internet Under-used 
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¶4.  (SBU) Expecting the youth organizations to have lively internet 
presences, we surfed to their homepages.  Youth organizations of 
Bavaria's smaller major parties, SPD/JUSOS, FDP/JULIS, the 
Greens/Gruene Jugend, and Die Linke/Linksjugend, had home pages that 
seemed to represent their parties relatively well.  As was our 
impression from  talks with the leadership, however, we found that 
the pages of Junge Union Bayern (Bavaria) (http://www.ju-bayern.de) 
and Junge Union Muenchen (http://www.ju-muenchen.de) revealed that 
the JU either cared little about the Bundestag elections, or was so 
sure about the CDU/CSU's success that they saw no need to work hard 
in cyberspace.  We found the pages weak on content and updated 
infrequently.  One link went to stale information on the European 
Parliament elections, now long past.  When we checked before meeting 
with the JU representatives, links to social networking media such 
as Twitter and Facebook were missing from the JU Munich homepage. 
(They have since been added.) 
 
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Students Rally over University Fees but 
Ignore the "Boring" National Campaign 
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¶5.  (SBU) Lack of interest in the current Bundestag campaign does 
not mean that Bavarian students are politically uninvolved. 
Repeated mass demonstrations protesting student fees in Munich 
earlier this year, complete with long parades, showed that in 
matters concerning them directly, the students were highly motivated 
and active.  Likewise, the students we met said they would certainly 
vote in the elections, although the JU leadership was worried 
because students complain that university work could keep them from 
the polls.  They told us that students seemed generally unaware of 
the absentee voting ("Briefwahl") option.  The conclusion from our 
contacts was that students were indifferent to the Bundestag 
elections because they found the campaigns boring and the 
politicians unattractive.  They even criticized the popular 
Economics Minister zu Guttenberg for being "too slick."  Since 
current polls already seem to be predicting the outcome, we were 
told, interest is further depressed. 
 
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Comment 
 
MUNICH 00000234  002 OF 002 
 
 
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¶6.  (SBU) Politics in Bavaria was turned upside down after the CSU 
lost the absolute majority in Landtag elections in September 2008. 
Minister President and CSU chairman Horst Seehofer has since tried 
to rejuvenate a crusty party apparatus by installing younger 
ministers and trying to engage more female politicians.  His aim is 
to reassert CSU domination Bavaria-wide.  The youth of his party, 
however, struck us as being lackadaisical about politics.  In four 
weeks, they will probably support the CSU in the Bundestag elections 
if they go vote, but with constant challenges from the Free 
Democratic Party (FDP) and Independents (Freie Waehler), the 
question is, for how long? 
 
¶7. (U) Consulate General Munich coordinated this report with Embassy 
Berlin.