Kohl Ally Promises Support in Elections : Free Democrats Agree to Remain as Coalition Partner in Bonn

The leader of the Free Democratic Party, the important junior coalition partner of West Germany’s governing Christian Democrats, promised Monday to support Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the national elections a year from now.

The pledge, coming at the beginning of the political season, gave Kohl’s center-right coalition the appearance, at least for now, of being well-entrenched to withstand the opposition Social Democrats’ campaign to dislodge it.

Martin Bangemann, Free Democratic chairman and economics minister in the Kohl Cabinet, told a meeting of his party in Stuttgart that they will enter the campaign as a team with the Christian Democrats, despite their differences.

He told the voters that they will have to chose between the current governing coalition and an opposition alliance that will made up of the Social Democrats and the radical Greens party.

“Everybody must know there is a simple alternative in 1987,” Bangemann said, “the continuation of the coalition in Bonn or a red-Green alliance. Nobody should have any doubts about this.

‘Red-Green Illusions’

“Nineteen eighty-seven will bring either red-Green illusions and insecurity or the continuation of realistic policies based on a firm foundation.”

In 1982, the Free Democrats, after 13 years of acting in coalition with the Social Democratic governments of Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt, switched their support to the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union, bringing Kohl to the chancellorship.

With their Free Democratic support, Kohl’s Christian Democrats won the last general election in 1983.

However, the coalition has not been an easy one. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Free Democrats’ former top leader, has sometimes been in conflict on foreign policy matters with Kohl, and he seeks more independence from the United States on some issues.

The Free Democrats have also publicly criticized Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann, a member of the Bavarian Christian Socialists.

At Sunday’s session of the Free Democrats’ party meeting, Walter Doering, party chief in the state of Baden-Wuerttemburg, accused Zimmermann of being “a grand-master from Frankenstein’s chamber of horrors” for withholding vital information from the federal Parliament in Bonn.

Right to Criticize

On Monday, party leader Bangemann backed Doering, declaring that the Free Democrats have the right to criticize other members of the governing coalition without being accused of disloyalty.

Bangemann also declared that the Christian Democrats are inflexible and often beholden to minority special interests.

For his part, Chancellor Kohl replied Monday that the Free Democrats seem determined to undermine the coalition.

“Attempts to gain prestige at the expense of a partner are damaging and intolerable for all coalition parties,” he said. “Some of the comments at the Stuttgart meeting are causing unnecessary harm to the government’s work.”

Ordinarily, such friction among the ruling partners might bode ill for the coalition’s chances in the elections 12 months away. But the Social Democrats do not appear to have the votes at present to win a clear majority in a national election; thus they could probably not govern without an alliance with the Free Democrats, which now seems out of the question, or with the ecological-minded Greens.

Candidate Spurns Greens

The Social Democratic candidate for the chancellorship, Johannes Rau, who is premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has rejected any coalition with the Greens because of their stand against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But the Social Democratic government in the central state of Hesse has added a Greens party leader, Joschka Fischer, as its minister of environment, an experiment that is being watched closely by political observers.

Moderate Social Democrats such as Rau fear being tarred by a radical label if their party’s militants or the Greens appear to be determining party policy.

And while Kohl’s standing declined in the public opinion polls of last spring and summer, he has since had a reversal of fortune. The latest polls show that the Christian Democrats now have about 46% of the vote, with the Free Democrats garnering 6% while the Social Democrats are down to 43%.