THE countdown has begun. Germany is heading for a highly suspense-filled parliamentary election on September 27, the likes of which Germans have not experienced in the past half-a-century. Pitted against each other in this voluble battle royale are chancellor Helmut Kohl, Europe's longest serving head of government, and Gerhard Schroeder, prime minister of the northern German state of Lower Saxony.
In the process, Europe as a whole may be at the crossroads. Following the victories by Tony Blair's Labour Party in Britain and Lionel Jospin's socialists in France, a possible Schroeder success would heave Europe's centre of gravity back toward the left after an era of conservatism. Should that happen this Sunday, for the first time since World War II a sitting German chancellor would have been defeated at the hustings. In Germany's consensus-oriented democracy, a change of government has until now been left in the hands of parliament.
But as the election day approaches, voter surveys are beginning to call into question what had appeared to be a definitive sign of impending change. The questions cropping up therefore are: will Helmut Kohl lead reunited Germany into the third millennia? Or will this task be left to his Social Democratic rival Schroeder? Will it be a clearcut victory for Schroeder and an unequivocal defeat for Kohl? Or, will Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) form a grand coalition?
This will depend on how the smaller parties fare, says political analyst Guenther Olthof. The key parties are: the Free Democratic Party (FDP), to which foreign minister Klaus Kinkel belongs, the anti-nuke and ecological Alliance 90/the Greens, Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor of the communist party SED (which ruled the now-defunct eastern Germany for 40 years), and the ultra-rightists DVU.
Whose argument carries larger conviction with the voter remains to be seen. Opinion polls published 10 days ahead of the election however pointed to a narrowing gap between Kohl's CDU and Schroeder's SPD. According to a survey by the Emnid Institute on behalf of the Spiegel newsmagazine, 41 per cent are likely to vote for the SPD and 38 per cent in favour of the CDU. This gap was 10-12 percentage points some two months ago. Significantly, these estimates tallied with those computed by Forsa and Infratest-Dimap surveys, conducted after the Bavarian prime minister Edmund Stoiber bagged 52.9 per cent of the vote in a state election on September 13.
According to election commissioner Johann Hahlen, 60.5 million are eligible to choose from among 33 parties and vote for the Bundestag, comprising 656 members. One-half of them will be elected from their respective constituencies on the principle of majority vote. The other half will enter parliament on the basis of their ranking on the party lists set up for elections. However, a party must have bagged 5 per cent of the vote to qualify for representation in the Bundestag. (This clause was introduced in 1953 to bar splinter groups from entering parliament—as they did during the Weimar Republic, which catapulted Adolf Hitler into power in the 1930s.) Touted by political observers as a millennium poll, this Sunday's election is crucial for Europe's economic power-house, a status Germany continues to enjoy in spite of the gloomy prospects if persistent unemployment holds out. Every tenth person capable of taking to paid work is jobless and the church organisation Caritas is warning against the inroads 'new poverty' is making in Germany.
Confronted with the ill tidings are in no small numbers those who were born between the years 1977 and 1980. These 3.3 million youngsters will be casting their ballot for the first time. Together with 12 million voters in eastern Germany, known as GDR until German reunification eight years ago, they will determine the outcome of the poll, says the respected Hamburg-based newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Eight years ago, Kohl promised them "blossoming landscapes" which are nowhere around the corner—despite some $80 billion in taxpayer's money pumped in every year. The unemployment rate is double that in western Germany.
Other than that, electoral issues are at a discount. "You have to go around with a magnifying glass to discover the issues at stake in this election," says Olthof. Change for the sake of change and perhaps a change for the better is all that the SPD is promising. "Sixteen years is enough," argues the telegenic Social Democrat Schroeder, referring to his rival's longevity in office. "We need a new government, which has the imagination and strength to face up to the challenges of the 21st century; Kohl is a spent force," he adds. "What we need is security and stability in a world that is increasingly turbulent, and a red-green coalition, backed by the communists, presents a grave risk," counters the heavyweight chancellor, who is running for a historic fifth term.
The poll marks a watershed for yet another reason, says political analyst Karl-Heinz Kirchner. A new government and a new Bundestag, which shift next year to Berlin, the official capital of Germany, will have to carry on where the old is leaving things now. Besides, when the New Year is rung in on January 1, 1999, Germany's sturdy Deutsche Mark will begin to be substituted by the single European currency Euro, a prospect at which not everyone rejoices.
