Berlin Grand Coalition falls

[Chris Burford]

Apart from a few abstensions, the special conference of the Berlin SPD has 
just decided to oppose Diepgen, the CDU mayor of Berlin for the last 11 
years, in a no-confidence vote on Thursday. This will mark the end of the 
Grand Coalition between the two parties, that supervised the unification of 
the city, to the exclusion of the former communists from East Berlin, the PDS.

Helped perhaps by the recent public apology from the PDS to the SPD for the 
coercive way the SED was created in the past, the conference was fired up 
by the continuing whiff of corruption that hangs over the CDU following 
Kohl's secret deals to finance the liberation of the East, to the advantage 
of his own party.

As speculation in land development came unstuck, a bank in which the city 
has a majority stake is virtually bankrupt. A prominent CDU ally of 
Diepgen, Landowsky, has just had to resign after revelations that he 
received campaign finance contributions from land developers who had 
defaulted on $300 million loans from the bank.

The coming election will be an important test of the balance of political 
forces in Germany.

At least that is as much as I can gather. Johannes?

Chris Burford

London