Elections in Germany update:No turn to the right, after all!

Are you saying we're out in Baden-Württemberg too?

Re PDS/Linke/WSAG:

I think, especially the Saxony-Anhalt showed now the upper limit of what they can get: some leftover SED voters (quite a few in the east), some wuzzy left opportunists, a few communists and a changing amount of protest voters.

The head of Germany's Social Democrats, equal partners in the country's ruling left-right coalition, today resigned from his post for health reasons.

Matthias Platzeck, 52, had been seen as a rising star on the left and was likely to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in the next general election, scheduled for 2009.

Platzeck, who took office just five months ago, had treatment in hospital recently for sudden hearing loss that was believed to be stress-related.

Speaking to reporters, he described his choice as "the most difficult of my life until now".

He will be replaced at the head of the party by Kurt Beck, who was recently re-elected, with an historic absolute majority, as leader of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Platzeck, who comes from the former East Germany like Merkel, took over the party leadership last November from Franz Muentefering, who had become vice-chancellor in the new government.

The second hearing loss, on March 29, inflicted ``considerable restrictions'' on his overall hearing ability, leading him to prepare today's decision to quit.

He told reporters today he had suffered two separate episodes of hearing loss in recent months as well as a ``circulatory and nervous breakdown'' in February.

Pity tho - Platzeck struck me as a good guy. But I guess good guys don't make it in the world of politics.

It is bitter that a dissident who once helped bring down the communists in East Germany couldn't get more loyalty from his own party's leadership.

Thomas wrote:

It is bitter that a dissident who once helped bring down the communists in East Germany couldn't get more loyalty from his own party's leadership.

I think, people are looking for other reasons than his - as soz pointed out above - truely serious health problems ... and how he deals with it: this doesn't happen often and makes outstanders kind of disbelieving the facts.

I am suggesting that Platzeck treatment by the people who were supposed to support him may have caused those problems, all of which are typical of people under severe stress.

You actually underlined that line with a marker and then scanned the article? Or pulled out the red pencil in Photoshop?

If so, I've not just been outnerded (again) ... I'm not going to have any right to the term whatsoever anymore.

(Serves me for trying to outgeek a German! )

As almost all SPD politicians Beck emphasised that Platzek had brought a "new, good style" in the party's leadership.

Neo-Nazis poised to win seats in German state parliament

· Polls put party above 5% threshold for success
· Poor economic conditions in east fuel discontent

Luke Harding in Berlin
Saturday September 16, 2006
The Guardian


Germany's racist neo-Nazi party is poised to make a stunning breakthrough at elections this weekend, entering a regional parliament for the second time in three years, polls suggest.
According to a poll for ZDF television, the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD) is likely to win 7% of the vote in elections on Sunday in the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. A poll by Infratest puts the party on 6%.

The projected result is above the 5% of the vote parties must achieve before they can sit in parliament, and means the far-right MPs could have seats for the first time. "We are very confident. It's extremely likely we are going to make it," Michael Andrejewski, the NPD's candidate in its stronghold town of Anklam, told the Guardian yesterday.

Mr Andrejewski said voters in Germany's depressed former communist east were turning to the neo-Nazi right because they were disillusioned with mainstream politics and fed up with the region's unemployment rate.

"People are furious. They are disappointed with this government. Unemployment here is 30%. If we can win here we will have established a trend. Our mid-term goal is to win seats in the Bundestag [Germany's federal parliament]."
A result above 5% would be an embarrassment for Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, whose seaside Baltic constituency is part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The region is abundant in lakes and forests, but is one of the most economically depressed parts of the country. Unemployment is officially put at 18%.

Hundreds of neo-Nazis have flooded into the state. The party has teamed up with local Kameradschaften, gangs of far-right skinheads - some of whom are standing as NPD candidates. Volunteers have hung up thousands of xenophobic placards and distributed copies of the party's far-right newspaper, the Island Messenger. They have also intimidated workers from other parties, it is alleged.

Rival candidates concede the NPD has waged a meticulous, professional campaign. "I have to admit that to a certain degree we have failed," said Uwe Schulz, Anklam's Social Democratic candidate.

Mr Schulz, whose party governs in the state's regional assembly in Schwerin with the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism, added: "My father came back from the second world war with a leg missing. These people appear to have learned nothing from the Nazi era. To hear these ideas and slogans again makes me furious."

Nationally, the NPD has had little impact. But in 2004 it won 9.25% of the vote in the east German state of Saxony in a surprise result, entering a regional parliament for the first time since 1968. Victory tomorrow would confirm fears that the party is an established feature of Germany's political landscape, analysts say.

In several Baltic villages in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the far-right now provides social services. It runs businesses and organises discos. The NPD has abandoned its skinhead image, fielding candidates in immaculate suits.

"There are a large number of people in east Germany who have become estranged from democracy," said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. "Mainstream parties have failed to address local problems."

Günter Hoffmann, founder of Anklam anti-Nazi group Bunt statt Braun, said: "The big mistake happened after the fall of the Berlin wall. The need to establish and teach democracy in the east was overlooked. We are now picking up the bill."

The quiet, stealthy rise of extremism in the state is linked to its woeful economic condition, analysts say. After reunification in 1990 manufacturing industry collapsed. Anklam's population shrank from 22,000 to 14,000 as the young fled west.

Success for the NPD tomorrow is likely to provoke an anguished debate among the ruling Christian and Social Democrats about what went wrong. Both govern in Berlin in a coalition led by Mrs Merkel.