On 7/18/05, Steven L. Robinson <srobin21 at comcast.net> wrote:
> PDS becomes Left Party, ahead of Greens in polls
>
> 18 July 2005
>
> <http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=2
> 2017&name=Left+Party+formed+from+PDS%2C%3CBR%3Eahead+of+Greens+in+polls>
>
> BERLIN - A far-left alliance of dissatisfied Social Democrats and former
> East German communists rallied in Berlin Sunday with polls showing their
> newly-christened Left Party has overtaken the Greens in voter support.
>
> The developments coincided with an unconfirmed report that President Horst
> Koehler plans this coming week to dissolve the Bundestag parliament and call
> a general election on September 18.
>
> With just two months to go, opinion surveys showed the Left Party garnering
> 10 per cent of the vote, compared to just 7 per cent for the Greens, junior
> partners in embattled Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's fragile centre-left
> coalition government.
>
> That would make the Left
>
> Party the third-strongest political force in Germany, behind front-runner
> Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) at 43 per cent and Schroeder's
> Social Democrats (SPD) at 27 per cent.
>
> In the five states constituting former communist East Germany, the Left
> Party has the support of a whopping 29 per cent of the electorate, according
> to an Emnid Institute poll. In the west, support is running at under 10 per
> cent -- head-and-head with the Greens in most places.
>
> The new far-left alliance is headed by former Schroeder cabinet member Oskar
> Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi, long the most charismatic figure in the
> far-leftist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the reconstituted East
> German Communist Party. Lafontaine heads the new leftist grouping called the
> Labour and Social Election Alternative (WASG).
>
> In Berlin Sunday, the PDS met in a national convention to change the party's
> name formally to Linkspartei (Left Party), thus paving the way for a merger
> with the WASG under a common campaign banner.
>
> "This is a second beginning for us," 57-year-old Gysi told delegates in
> Berlin. "Fifteen years after our first beginning we are now poised to take
> on more political power than ever before."
>
> Schroeder, whose Social Democrats are trailing in the public opinion surveys
> in the run-up to the planned September general election, continued to lash
> out at dissenters in his own party who have gone over to the new Left Party,
> as well as at his conservative challenger Merkel.
>
> "I am confident that we can turn this campaign around and emerge
> victorious," Schroeder said. "And if the federal president should decide
> against calling a new election, then I have every intention of remaining in
> office and filling out my full term for another year."
>
> According to an unconfirmed report in Monday's editions of Der Spiegel news
> magazine, Koehler viewed Schroeder's remarks as a threat to him. The
> magazine said Koehler had told his aides he now had no choice but to call
> for a new election in order to prevent political chaos in Germany.
>
> Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, meanwhile, issued a blistering attack on
> the new Left Party.
>
> "There is absolutely no reason for us to cower in fear or shame," Fischer,
> the Green Party's standard-bearer, said in published remarks.
>
> "We have an admirable and in fact outstanding record, built in two decades
> of hard work in the German Bundestag," said Fischer, who was in New York
> over the weekend for deliberations at the United Nations on Germany's bid to
> gain a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
>
> "We have nothing to fear from anybody as we go into an election campaign
> from which I am confident we will emerge victorious."
>
> Germany's Greens, facing a strong challenge from the political left for the
> first time in their history, held their own party congress last weekend,
> hammering out an election platform aimed at defusing the threat from the
> left.
>
> Fired on by Fischer, the Greens party congress hammered out leftist and
> environmentalist stances in clear demarcation to the new far-left grouping
> who are rallying around Lafontaine.
>
> Platform planks included higher taxes on the rich, better day-care
> programmes for double-earner families and tax breaks for future- oriented,
> environmentally friendly technologies.
>
> But Fischer's remarks come as opinion surveys show that the Left Party could
> garner more than 10 per cent in the election. Political analysts say that
> would doom any chance of Schroeder's SPD remaining in power with its junior
> coalition partners, the Greens.
>
> Analysts predict meanwhile that such a development in the general election
> might well result in the formation of a grand coalition headed by Christian
> Democrats with Schroeder's SPD as junior members.
>
> (c) DPA with Expatica
>
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