People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Vol. XXV

No. 44

November 04,2001

BERLIN CITY ELECTIONS, OCTOBER 21

Implication of Elections to City Parliament

and Borough Councils

The Berlin population was called to vote in early elections on October 21 because the "grand coalition" of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) confirmed in office only two years ago, collapsed in a huge bank scandal caused by the machinations of a prominent CDU figure Klaus Landowski, leaving the city with a debt of 78 billion marks.

The Berlin SPD decided to leave the government (Senate), and their new leader Klaus Wowereit was elected acting mayor of the city in June by SPD, Greens and PDS. Since then Berlin has been ruled by a minority red-green Senate tolerated by the PDS. The capital is the only federal state of Germany where East meets West directly. Two thirds of the electorate live in the former western, one third in the eastern part. In an administrative reform which started on January 1 this year, the 23 city boroughs were merged into 12 – in several cases cutting across the old border - and the city parliament reduced from 150 to 140 seats.

THE results of the October 21 elections have been characterised by some commentators as a political earthquake. After a prolonged election campaign where the conservatives tried to re-establish the frontlines of the cold war, the three parties of the Left gained nearly two thirds of the vote, reducing the bourgeois wing to merely one third. A new feature of Berlin politics is that no single party managed to get more than 30 % of the vote, leaving the PDS as the only "people’s party" – although only in the east of the city. The turnout of 68.4 % was 2.5 % higher than in 1999.

GAINS OF PDS

The PDS has emerged as one of the big winners in these elections. Its strong showing has attracted marked attention of the foreign media. With 22.6 % of the vote (an increase of 4.9 %) and 33 seats in the city parliament, it has achieved its best result since reunification. The biggest gains made were in the eastern part of the city where, with 47.6% of the vote, (up 8.1 %), it came close to an absolute majority, winning all 32 constituencies. In the west of Berlin it passed the magic "5% barrier" by gaining an overall 6.9 % of the vote,(up 2.7 %). Thus the PDS is now represented in the councils of all 12 city boroughs of Berlin, in two of which it has won an absolute majority, in another three a relative majority. The PDS is the only party which has seen a permanent increase in its vote since 1990. It has moreover, the highest support of all parties among young voters of 18-25 years, and among people with higher education.

In toto the PDS was able to attract about 81,000 new votes, among them about 30,000 former non-voters. With these elections the party has finally established itself as an all-Berlin party – a big boost for its efforts to grow in the west of the country. This result is also a reassuring signal for the coming national elections in September next year.

These results of the PDS were due mainly to four factors:

In the person of Gregor Gysi it presented one of the most charismatic German politicians as a candidate, who attracted voters far beyond the traditional PDS clientèle.
The voters appreciated the committed work and high competence of the PDS mayors, deputies and municipality workers in the past years.
The PDS met the strong wish of the people for a change in politics, for more social justice in the capital.
It was the only party which combined solidarity for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks with a consistent NO, to the US military action in Afghanistan.

SPD RESULTS

The SPD, by achieving 29.7 % (up 7.3 %) and 44 seats, after a historic low of 22.4 % in 1999, has again become the strongest party of the city after nearly 30 years. Managing to quickly distance itself from its discredited partner, the CDU, together with whom it had ruled the city for nearly ten years, it still failed to win enough votes for a clear majority. The SPD was able to benefit from the weakness of its former ally, and from the present strong showing of the red-green federal government. Klaus Wowereit also made good use of his mayoral position.

LAND-SLIDE ROUT OF CDU

For the CDU these elections ended in a land-slide failure. After having been for decades the strongest party of Berlin with a 40.8 % vote in 1999, it saw its support plunge to the record low of 23.7 % (minus 17.1 %) and 35 seats in the city parliament. So it came in only 1 % before the PDS. With 12.4 % in east Berlin (against 26.9 % in 1999) it can play there only a marginal role.

The voters sentenced the CDU for its corruption, its role in the city’s financial plight, its inability to admit its wrongdoing to solve the huge problems of the city, arising from its lack of understanding of the big changes the city has undergone since unification. The people clearly showed that they do not any longer want the city to be governed by the old West Berlin establishment in power since 1990.

LOSSES BY GREENS

By getting 9.1 % of the vote (minus 0.8 %) the Greens almost managed to stabilise their result of 1999 – an important fact after 16 lost Lander elections in the past years. But they failed to reach their goal of a minimum 10 %. The result is not nearly enough for continuing the acting red-green government in place since the fall of the grand coalition in June. In their own eyes the Greens' losses are mainly due to their approval of the federal government’s "unlimited support" for the US military campaign in Afghanistan.

Nearly 15 000 former green supporters who appreciated the PDS anti-war stance transferred their vote to the PDS . The losses for the Greens would have been even higher had not the party chairperson, Claudia Roth, only days before the election, supported UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson’s call for a temporary halt of the bombings for humanitarian reasons – a demand easily ignored by German (Green) foreign minister Joschka Fischer.

THE PRO-BUSINESS PARTY

Among the winners of these elections are the Free Democrats (FDP). Not having been represented in parliament for two legislations, this time they managed to score 9.9 % of the vote (an increase of 7.7 %) overtaking the Greens. However, this result does not go primarily to the merit of the pro-business party. The bulk of their voters this time have been former CDU supporters for whom the Christian Democrats were no longer a viable proposition.

A very positive result of the October21 election has been the reduction of the extreme right parties to near non-existence. Their two parties the "Republicans" and the NPD, got 1.3 and 0.9 % of the vote respectively, losing all the seats in the five borough councils in which they had been represented.

WHAT NEXT?

Now the big question of Berlin politics is who shall form the new government. As the strongest party the SPD has a clear mandate. It has definitely ruled out a repetition of the grand coalition; a continuation of the red-green Senate is also impossible. There are several other options before it:

A so-called 'traffic lights' coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP forming a red-green-yellow Senate. This option is most favoured by many west Berlin voters, by the media and by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. But it would have only a slim majority of two seats in the city parliament, with two FDP deputies belonging to the far right national-liberal wing, whose political views are closer to the conservatives than to the Greens or social democrats. Besides, the Greens and FDP are bitter political rivals at the federal level. Their positions in many fields are very divergent or even opposite to each other. With less than a year before Germany’s general elections, this would represent a grim prospect for a harmonious city government. But for the FDP it is the only chance to come to rule and to prevent the PDS from doing so for the first time after the unification of Berlin.
A red-red coalition of SPD and PDS. This would have a clear majority of 6 seats. The PDS has declared its readiness to enter the city government together with the SPD. It sees its election result as a clear signal from the voters that the only genuine east Berlin party should at last be included in the ruling of the city. This would be a positive demonstration of the will to finally overcome the psychological rift still dividing the capital. But this prospect has proved to be most controversial. It is violently attacked by the CDU, the FDP and a part of the Berlin and German media. Chancellor Schröder who has clearly hinted where his sympathies are, has to make his choice: either ignore the will of nearly half of the east Berlin population and take the risk of a frustrated response during the general elections, or changing his stance and getting a boost out of it for his party in September 2002.
A red-red-green coalition of SPD, PDS and Greens. Arithmetically the Greens would not be necessary for forming such a government, but with them would give a very comfortable majority of twenty seats. In a sense his t would be the logic development out of the present situation, with the PDS tolerating a red-green minority Senate. The differences in the field of Berlin politics could be managed. The main foreign policy difference – supporting or opposing the US military action in Afghanistan and a German role in the latter – is not regarded relevant at the Lander level.

Acting mayor Klaus Wowereit has kept all his options open. He has started talks with all three would-be partners. Reacting to hints from the federal SPD, he underlined that the solution wouldhave to be a local one. According to his words, he is aiming at a stable government which would last the coming five-year legislature and be able to tackle the enormous problems of the city – its heavy debt burden, its ruined budget, its high unemployment rate of 16 %, its deficits in health, education and culture.