Germany Gets Dreads

As Germany struggles to find a stable coalition government after inconclusive elections on Sunday, one of the possible party constellations often mentioned is the "Jamaica" one.

It's named after the colors of the parties involved, the Christian Union bloc (black), the Free Democrats (yellow) and the Greens (well, green), which correspond to the colors on the flag of this sun and -- the stereotype has it anyway -- pot-smoke-drenched Caribbean nation.

Ah, Jamaica, where the living is easy, the mood relaxed and the music Bob Marley inspired. Seems quite an unlikely inspiration for a political grouping in Germany, where clouds loom heavy and often, dispositions are gloomier than glad, and the oompah-band tuba drowns out the steel drum.

"You can imagine what I was seeing," said Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, referring to the first time he actually heard the term. "I saw people sitting around in dreadlocks with joints in their hands, and reggae music playing in the background." And at first, he was not impressed. Besides, he said, "can you imagine Angela Merkel or Edmund Stoiber with dreadlocks?"

Indeed, the Jamaican lifestyle appears somewhat incongruent to the German parties concerned. It's hard to picture the fairly white-bread Christian center-right and the buttoned-up libertarians of the FDP getting down with some ska, doing a limbo on the beach. The Greens, on the other hand, well, OK.

Field trip to the island

The Jamaicans themselves are taking it all in stride. "It's great that everyone's talking about our country," Marcia Gilbert-Roberts, the Jamaican ambassador to Germany, told The Financial Times Deutschland. "If such a coalition comes to fruition, then we'll invite all concerned to Jamaica."

What they'd see there though, is not likely a model they'll want for Germany. Laid back and sun soaked as it may be, Jamaica also has a darker side. Violent crime on the island is rampant; the country has the world's third highest homicide rate. After dusk, tourists are strongly recommended not to go out of their hotels alone on foot.

And come to think of it, is a little bit more of Jamaica what Germany needs at this point?

Analysts have already accused Germans of hiding their heads in the sand when it comes to changes the country needs to meet the challenges of globalization. While a little more joie de vivre certainly wouldn't hurt the country, smoking a good deal of pot and hanging out on the beach all day is likely not the right recipe to get Germany out of the economic morass it's currently in.

And besides, many Green party members are less than enthusiastic about the thought of governing with the CDU or the FDP.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, a Green party parliamentarian from Berlin, said Jamaica wasn't really the right term for such a possible partnership, although it was geographically close.

It's more likely, he said in a television interview, that if the Green party got on board that particular boat, they'd find themselves soon "going under in the Bermuda Triangle."