DRESDEN (Germany) Sixteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ex-communists from the former East Germany are making a political comeback, drawing on savvy campaign tactics and public frustration with the weak German economy to play a possible spoiler role in the Sept. 18 national elections.
The former communists have found new strength by teaming with defectors from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party to form the Left Party. Public opinion polls suggest the new group may gain enough votes to make it difficult for the country’s mainstream political parties to form a government.
Although surveys show that only 8 per cent to 10 per cent of Germans back the Left Party, its transformation of a collection of fringe groups into a cohesive political organization has become a nightmare for Schroeder, peeling away many supporters from his ruling coalition. The Left is hurting other parties as well and could prevent the coalition that is leading in the polls, the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats, from capturing a majority.
The Left Party is the brainchild of two skilled and charismatic politicians: Oskar Lafontaine, a former finance minister under Schroeder who quit the government in 1999 after he criticized the chancellor for cozying up to big business; and Gregor Gysi, a former leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to East Germany’s Communist Party.
Their prescription for Germany’s high unemployment rate and fraying social safety net is simple. They want to establish an annual gross minimum wage of $21,000, as well as more generous welfare, pension and health care benefits. To pay for the huge increase in spending, they would impose a 50 per cent income tax on anyone earning more than $75,000 a year and would raise taxes on businesses.
“Only when we regain some social justice, more social welfare, more real wage increases, only then can the economy recover,” Gysi said in an interview with a German television station. “At least you know where you stand with us. We certainly won’t succumb to the ridiculous temptation to campaign as the Party of the New Centre.”
The ex-communists have long enjoyed a strong base of support in the former East Germany but have struggled to win acceptance in the rest of the country, winning less than five per cent of the vote in the previous national elections, in 2002. When they announced the new alliance and name in June, however, the group quickly shot up in the polls, winning a 12 per cent approval rating.
“This brilliant move to make the party appear as a brand-new one attracted a lot of people on the left side of the political spectrum,” said Thomas Petersen, a pollster with the Allensbach Institute, an opinion survey group. “I doubt it will work in the long run. It’s a very unhomogeneous mix of two very different groups. But for this election, it was a brilliant move.”
Analysts see the former communists as the dominant partner. The Social Democrat splinter group had support of only about one per cent to three per cent in opinion polls before the new party was formed.
In the past few weeks, the party’s poll numbers have dwindled a bit, partly because of the increased public scrutiny that came with its new prominence. Lafontaine in particular has taken a beating from Germany’s conservative newspapers. The Bild tabloid published photos of him taking a vacation last month at a 15th-century estate on the Mediterranean island of Majorca instead of campaigning, dubbing him a ‘luxury leftist’. Lafontaine has struggled to shrug off the criticism that he is insensitive to the working class. “Here stands a luxury leftist, in a luxury suit, with a luxury necktie and a luxury shirt, luxury undershirt and luxury shoes,” he said sarcastically when he appeared at his party’s convention in Berlin two weeks ago.
Still, the Left Party’s message resonates with many voters across Germany who bemoan the 11.4 per cent unemployment rate — the highest since the aftermath of the Second World War — and the country’s weak economic growth, which lags behind that of every other country in the European Union. —Dawn/The Washington Post News Service
