Ex-Communists Gain in German Local Elections

In the first local elections in eastern Germany since unification, former Communists staged an impressive comeback Sunday that made them a major political force in the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin.

Even more significant in national terms, Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats fell from first place into a virtual dead heat with the former Communists.

With 60% of the vote counted, the Christian Democrats had 21.9% of the vote, and the former Communists, now known as the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), had 21%. The main opposition Social Democrats were the big winner, with 34.3%

The main evening national television news described the poll as “a disaster” for Kohl’s party.

It is the latest in a series of recent political setbacks for the chancellor, who in the last 10 days has seen his chosen candidate for president forced to step down under an avalanche of criticism, then watched an entire state Cabinet led by his party resign amid scandal.

While Sunday’s elections involved only one of Germany’s 16 states and focused on representatives for city and community offices where personalities frequently count as much as party affiliation, the results are considered significant nationally.

Except for the eastern parts of Berlin, which were involved in city assembly elections 18 months ago, Sunday’s poll marks the first ballot test in the former Communist east since Kohl won his landslide reelection in the afterglow of unification in December, 1990.

The results are considered especially important because they come on the eve of the 1994 “super election year” in Germany, when Kohl himself faces the voters in federal parliamentary elections in one of 19 scheduled votes.

The strong showing of the former Communists is far from an isolated incident in the former Soviet Bloc.

In September, voters in Poland gave two parties with Communist-era roots a majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament, while an October, 1992, election in Lithuania also gave power back to former Communists.