BERLIN — Voters in the German capital gave hearty endorsement to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats in state elections Sunday, but a surprisingly strong showing by the former Communists appears likely to put pressure on the leading party to share power with them.
The Party of Democratic Socialism, or PDS, successor to the East German Communists who divided this city with the Berlin Wall, remains popular with the nation's eastern voters for the party's focus on social security issues and its post-unification transformation into a champion of human rights.
But even 12 years after the notorious symbol of Cold War division was toppled by pro-democracy forces, western Germans remain strongly opposed to the notion of a governing partnership with the political descendants of those who built the wall and shot countrymen trying to breach it.
The Social Democrats, who won about 30% of the vote in this state of 3.5 million, also have the option of forming a three-party coalition with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Liberal Democrats.
But as a PDS leader argued soon after the results were in, rejection of the ex-Communists, who won 23% of the vote, in favor of two parties that together polled less would constitute a missed opportunity to mend the psychological rift still dividing the German capital into east and west.
"That would hardly be a signal for reconciliation. Quite the contrary," warned Olaf Claus, head of the PDS chapter in Berlin, which is both a city and a state. He also noted that an alliance of the Social Democrats and the Greens with the Liberal Democrats would be politically unwieldy, as the latter have long been a partner with the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU.
The Christian Democrats garnered only 24% of the vote, compared with 40% two years ago.
Sunday's election came three years ahead of schedule--made necessary by the resignation of Mayor Eberhard Diepgen of the CDU amid a corruption scandal. Berlin is virtually bankrupt, with a $37-billion debt racked up over the last decade as politicians spent liberally to rebuild the east and backed suspect construction firms with loans from a state-owned bank.
Klaus Wowereit, the Social Democrat who was named acting mayor after Diepgen's June ouster, will take on the title permanently as the lead candidate from the party that gathered the largest share of the vote. The first openly gay state leader in Germany, Wowereit has swiftly gained popularity in this capital, which has transformed itself into a modern, liberal and culturally diverse metropolis in the years since the wall was brought down.
