A historic defeat for chancellor Kohl and a clear victory for
the left are the most
outstanding features of the German election on September
27. After exactly 16 years of
Kohl in office, German workers and youth said: enough is
enough. German is now likely to
be governed by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
Hans Gerd Ofinger analyses the
implications from Germany.
Things are changing fast in Germany. In
September 1998, the Social Democratic
Party (SPD) scored a big victory in the Bundestag elections,
ousting the bourgeois
coalition under Kohl which had held power for 16 years.
The new "red-green"
coalition government under chancellor Schröder was
greeted with great hope by millions of
workers, unemployed, old age pensioners and youth. Now
the SPD as well as the Greens are
stumbling from defeat to catastrophe to disaster.
In Germany, the new millenium has been ushered in by a
party financing and corruption
scandal which was more exciting than many thrillers and
caused a political earthquake of
unprecedented dimensions.
Hans-Gerd Öfinger, from the editorial board of
the German Marxist magazine Der Funke
looks to the prospects for the upcoming elections in September. With Schröder's
uninspiring Blairite policies, voter absention could well open the door to the
Christian Democrats who were so sounded defeated four years ago.
Edmund Stoiber, a leading reactionary Christian Democratic leader was defeated in the German elections last Sunday,
though by a narrow margin. There was a sigh of relief on the part of many SPD activists, trade unionists and youth
up and down the country. The threat of a Stoiber victory mobilised the SPD and green vote,
but against the background of a severe economic crisis, all sorts of conflicts will open up, and major disappointment
and anger on the part of workers and youth will be on the order of the day.