GERMANY: Left Party leads polls in the east

international | politics / elections | other press Sunday July 17, 2005 09:53 by MR MOJO RISIN - none

GERMANY: Left Party leads polls in the east

GERMANY: Left Party leads polls in the east


Norman Brewer, Bremen

Norman Brewer, Bremen

On July 3, the extraordinary national congress of the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG) voted overwhelmingly to stand candidates on the “open list” of the PDS (Party for Democratic Socialism), which will in turn change its name to the Left Party. In the eastern states, the ticket will stand as Left-Party.PDS on ballot papers.

The WASG membership has until July 15 to vote in a ballot to confirm or reject the decision to participate in the joint list. The following day, the PDS congress needs a two-thirds vote in favour to adopt the name change.

The alliance has completely changed Germany’s political polls. An Emnid poll found that, with 30% support, a WASG-PDS alliance under the name Left Party is already the strongest polling party in the five eastern states that used to make up the German Democratic Republic. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social-Democratic Party is 10% behind in those states. Other polls now confirm that, nationwide, the Left Party is stable at 11%.

Given how successful the new party appears to be, election commentators are predicting that the conservative Christian Democratic Union will form a “grand coalition” with the SPD as a junior partner to oppose the Left Party. At the moment, the SPD governs in coalition with the German Greens. Once a renowned radical anti-war party, since they first went into coalition government with the SPD in 1998, the Greens have moved rightwards, supporting neoliberal policy and even imperialist war in Afghanistan. Consequently, they are clearly losing voters to the new Left Party.

A conservative coalition government would polarise the parliament between the neoliberal SPD-CDU forces, and the pro-Keynesian, welfare-state-defending Left Party. This would place considerable pressure on the Greens. If the Greens responded by moving further rightward, it would likely lose them even more supporters, and entrench a relatively conservative, wealthier constituency as their base. It could also take ground out from the right-wing Free Democratic Party.

Schroeder, who deliberately lost a confidence vote in order to trigger early elections, has already ruled out any coalition with the Left Party. Not surprising, given that Left Party leaders have repeatedly said they would not govern with Schroeder.

Former general Joerg Schoenbohm, a CDU minister in the state of Brandenburg, has called for the secret service to monitor WASG leader Oskar Lafontaine. This is part of a smear campaign accusing Lafontaine of fishing for far-right votes after he spoke of “foreign workers” in a speech. Lafontaine has clarified that he in no way meant to support the common right-wing racist slur that foreign-born workers take jobs away from German-born workers. But this has not stopped the attacks on Lafontaine, whose passionately unionist parents were forced to flee Nazi Germany.

From Green Left Weekly, July 13, 2005.