PDS out of the ghetto?

[Johannes Schneider]

Chris wrote:
> I would appreciate if German correspondents could confirm or clarify some
> developments I think I have picked up on German teletext over the last
week
> or so.
>
> Following the setbacks for the SDP in the series of elections and the
> advances of the PDS voices have been raised increasingly strongly in the
> SPD that the party should be able to discuss cooperation with the PDS.
> Schroeder's office appears to have backed a formula announced by the
> incoming party president Muntefering, that this issue can be decided on a
> state to state (Länder) basis.
Thats nothing new. Its more or less the official SPD policy of the last few
years-
> The SPD head in the south west state of
> Baden Baden, which tends to be dominated by an alliance of the CDU and the
> Greens, has called for "unverkrampft" exchanges with the PDS. I think that
> means uninhibited or unconstrained.
I would translate 'unverkrampft' as 'relaxed'.
> Although the CDU is still trying to scare the SPD into avoiding all
contact
> with the PDS it appears that that restraint has gone and the SPD has
> decided in its somewhat weakened condition that for tactical reasons alone
> it must be able to bargain with the PDS as well as the CDU.
I think this you got wrong. At the moment the SPD is not so much concerned
about the PDS, but about itself. But in the last week some moderate CDU
politicians started a discussion about stopping to demonize the PDS and
treating it just as any other competing party.
> Meanwhile I think I caught one suggestion that the SPD should have a
> strategic alliance with the shrinking FDP. Although the FDP is very much a
> party of economic liberalism, the formula was said to be based on an
> understanding between its concepts of human rights and the more social
> emphasis on human rights of the SPD.
Strategic alliance with a party thats struggling for existence? That doesnt
sound so clever to me.
> Altogether German politics look a little more fluid.
>
> If the PDS is really out of the ghetto it is not clear how much there may
> be a real option in the future for a more radical social democratic
> alliance. But at least the traditions of  socialism of east Germany have
> indirectly been recognised as not entirely negative.This symbolic shift
may
> be hard to define but it may signal some hope for greater social
> accountability in the process of European integration.
Generally I would ask you not to overestimate the recent electoral successes
of the PDS. In the east the PDS does not stand so much for 'socialism', but
for 'social justice'. For a 'radical social democratic alliance' the PDS has
to establish a solid base in the west as well. At the moment the PDS is more
a regional protest party than a national social democratic alternative.
Johannes