German Elections Give Surprise Boost to Kohl

At a time of economic stagnation, record unemployment and widespread concern about the future, voters in three German states gave a surprise “attaboy” to the coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in elections Sunday.

Although the voters weren’t selecting new representatives to send to Bonn, their choices for the three state legislatures were widely interpreted as a vote to continue the federal status quo, in the form of Kohl’s center-right coalition.

The largest opposition party, the Social Democrats, had been strongly favored to gain power in Sunday’s elections--so much so that many analysts had been predicting that Kohl would soon be forced to establish a new power-sharing arrangement. Instead, voters spurned the center-left Social Democrats, reducing their positions in the legislatures of all three states where votes were held.

In one state, Schleswig-Holstein, the Social Democrats lost the absolute majority they had enjoyed, forcing them to negotiate a coalition government. In another state, Baden-Wurttemberg, the results showed the Social Democrats losing ground among their usual core constituencies: the young and the working class. They also lost ground in the third state, Rhineland-Palatinate.

“There is no doubt, this is a bitter loss,” said Gerhard Schroeder, governor of the state of Lower Saxony and a prominent Social Democrat.

Meanwhile, the moribund Free Democratic Party, Kohl’s junior coalition partner, bounced back Sunday, winning significantly more votes in each state than even the most optimistic polls had predicted.

The Free Democrats had campaigned on an aggressive platform of tax reductions and economic incentives aimed at improving Germany’s international competitive position. Analysts in Germany were reading Sunday’s results not so much as a sign that classical pro-business thinking has suddenly caught on here but as a sign that voters simply want to do whatever it takes to strengthen Kohl’s position in Bonn.

The electoral boost couldn’t have come at a better time for Germany’s veteran chancellor. The last two months have brought repeated bad economic news, raising fears that the country is sinking toward its second recession in five years. The budget deficit is yawning, unemployment has risen above 10%, and Kohl has been saying that job creation is his government’s top priority.

But the chancellor has been unable to take any concrete steps toward making the German economy into a go-go job creator, partly because of the sensitivities of the just-ended election season. Making Germany into an investor-friendly place is likely to mean union givebacks and other painful austerity measures. With the recent campaigning in full swing, no politician dared state clearly just which hard-won gains of the work force might have to be discarded.

Germans were thus hailing Sunday’s elections not only for the strong signal they sent but also because they mean the political class can now take urgent matters of state off hold.

With the voters safely home from the polls, analysts believe the federal government’s first priorities will be a debate over an increase in the value-added tax--the lowest in the European Union--and a search for ways to reduce the cost of doing business.

By fall, Kohl will have governed Germany for 14 years--longer than any other chancellor in the postwar era. Until Sunday, his coalition had been showing signs of strain.

Kohl enjoys just a 10-seat majority in Germany’s 672-seat lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. The upper house is dominated by the Social Democrats. And the Free Democrats’ low standing had made the Kohl coalition look silly for having given the small party three major Cabinet portfolios.

Sunday’s results, however, even brought suggestions that Kohl should be his party’s candidate for the chancellery in 1998.

Christian Retzlaff of The Times’ Berlin Bureau contributed to this report.