Left resurgence

State elections in Berlin provide evidence of the growing popularity of the Left.

THE elections held in Berlin in the fourth week of October could turn out to be a watershed in German politics. For the first time after the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor of the East German Communist Party, has come close to sharing power at the State level. Although the PDS did not win a majority, it took 23 per cent of the vote, much of it from among people living in the western part of the city. West Berlin, with its avowedly capitalist culture nurtured after East Germany built the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War, was the vote bank of the conservative Christian Democratic Party.

In the years that followed reunification, the majority of East Berliners, lured by tall promises of prosperity in a united Germany, had cast their lot with the Conservatives. The Christian Democrats had ruled Berlin uninterruptedly for almost 20 years. Until recently the party headed a coalition government in Berlin. The recent elections resulted in a resounding defeat for the Christian Democrats, who got only 24 per cent of the votes, a drop of 17 percentage points compared to the elections held two years ago.

The Social Democrats (SPD), led by Berlin's Acting Mayor Klaus Wowereit, got the highest share of the votes - around 29 per cent. This is not sufficient for the party to form a government on its own. Wowereit has acknowledged that he is gay, and his "I'm gay and it's good that way" has become one of the most popular refrains in Germany. The Christian Democrats tried in vain to make an issue of his sexual orientation.

If the SPD aligns itself with the PDS, together they can form a stable coalition government to rescue the German national capital region from the dire financial straits it is currently in. This is what the Left wants, but powerful sections within the SPD, especially those close to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, are against this. They prefer to go in for an unwieldy coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. Both these parties fared poorly in the elections. Such a coalition would give the SPD government only a wafer-thin majority of five. A Left-Left (SPD-PDS) coalition would, on the other hand, provide them a majority of 13 in the Berlin Assembly.

The three-party coalition that is currently favoured by the SPD would be an indicator of the shape of things to come. With the general elections scheduled for next year, Schroeder may be thinking of a nationwide three-party alliance. This is because, the Green Party, his current ally in government, is fast losing its credibility. It now seems to be irrevocably split into right- and left-wing factions. The Green Party, which actively promoted global peace throughout the Cold War period, is now a supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the U.S. war machine. An influential section of the Green leadership has evidently been seduced by state power.

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, once the standard-bearer of the peace movement in the country, is now an apologist for Washington's war in the Balkans and Afghanistan. A recent opinion poll showed Fischer to be among the most popular politicians in Germany, but many people in his own party and on the Left consider him a war-monger. Last year the Green Party officially declared that it was no longer part of the Left movement. Although the SPD faces no real threat from the Christian Democrats in next year's elections, many in the party prefer the company of the Centre-Right than rely exclusively on the anarchic Greens, who are considered to be on the verge of imploding.

There is a good chance that the political space being vacated by the Greens could be filled by the PDS, led by the charismatic Grigor Gysi. The PDS is the only party in Germany today that proudly calls itself socialist. It is also alone in vociferously opposing Germany's support for America's war against Afghanistan. German commentators say that one reason for the PDS having attracted so many votes was its principled stand against the war. And in Gysi, who has an alternative vision for Germany, the PDS has one of the country's most articulate leaders.

After reunification, most German commentators had written off the PDS. But its vote share has been on the rise not only in the erstwhile East Germany but also in the more prosperous West. In many hard-hit regions in the East unemployment hovers around 30 per cent, and this has not endeared the ruling party to the people. In the West, the firm and consistent stand against Germany's participation in the U.S.-led war and militarisation is one reason why the PDS has been attracting new supporters. It has become a fact of German political life that the PDS is there to stay, disproving predictions by many German politicians and psephologists that it is a transient phenomenon.

The new government in Berlin will have a herculean task. The city has run into a debt of $36 billion and has the slowest economic growth among Germany's 16 States. Cronyism and graft are rampant in the city, which boasts of three opera houses and three airports. The SPD is taking its own time to choose its coalition partner or partners. In all likelihood, the PDS will be left out in the cold. Anyway, the SPD and the PDS will be uncomfortable bed-fellows if they share power in Berlin as the German Chancellor's views on the war and terrorism run contrary to the world-view of the PDS.