German Election Ushers In Change as Kohl Is Ousted

Gerhard Schroeder, the suave and media-savvy governor of Lower Saxony, ousted German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a splintered federal election Sunday, sending Europe’s longest-serving leader into retirement and ending an era that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.

The one clear message from the vote that gave Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party a mandate to build a new government was that Germans wanted change after 16 years of Kohl, even if they remain uncertain how best to achieve it.

While Schroeder’s party and the environmentalist Greens appeared to have enough votes between them to hold a slim majority in the Bundestag, or Federal Assembly, strong showings by the liberal Free Democrats, who have been junior partners in Kohl’s coalition, and by the former Communists of eastern Germany meant the opposition will be nearly equal in numbers.

In a dignified concession barely an hour after the polls closed, a weary Kohl, showing all of his 68 years, congratulated his younger opponent and announced his resignation from the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, which he has headed for a quarter of a century.

“This is a personal success for Gerhard Schroeder, and I wish him a deft hand for the sake of our country,” Kohl, poised and betraying little emotion, told supporters, who sipped dejectedly from champagne glasses that had been filled before results came in to CDU headquarters in Bonn.

With his party’s meager 35% showing, the worst in its postwar history, Kohl became the first sitting chancellor to be voted out of office since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949 on the ruins of Nazism.

While Schroeder’s policies differ little from those of Kohl--and his election expressed a hunger for a new face more than for a new direction--the departure of the known quantity of Kohl could upset world markets and introduce a period of uncertainty about where Germany is headed. As an anti-establishment activist of the 1960s and an untested figure in foreign affairs, Schroeder will need to prove his centrist credentials to calm fears in Washington and elsewhere that he has supplanted a trusted friend of President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Schroeder arrived at his party’s packed nerve center to a press of well-wishers so overwhelming that they spilled onto the capital’s main drag, creating a giant street party and blocking traffic.

The 54-year-old son of a war widow who scrubbed floors to support her five children, Schroeder paid his respects to Kohl before vowing to fulfill his campaign pledges to “fight the scourge of unemployment” while maintaining a stable economy and foreign policy.

“He was a tough opponent, but the voters have spoken about whom they want to lead our country into the future,” Schroeder told the jubilant crowd baking in the heat of thousands of television lights. He promised to shepherd Germany through the tough challenges of the next four years, which will include European monetary union, a move of the government from Bonn to this prewar capital, and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

While Schroeder and his left-of-center Social Democrats won the right to open coalition talks with potential partners by virtue of their collecting 41% of the vote, the largest percentage, the shape and spirit of the post-Kohl leadership were far from clear.

The leftist Greens, who won 6.5% of the vote, have been declaring themselves ready to compromise and cooperate with Schroeder. But with only a slim majority in the Bundestag, the coalition would have to worry about radical Greens breaking ranks to vote down legislation vital to reforming Germany’s bloated social welfare system.

Schroeder and Social Democratic leader Oskar Lafontaine left open the option of talking with Kohl’s CDU successors about a possible grand coalition--the “elephants’ wedding” option that would draw the traditional adversaries of Christian and Social Democrats into a governing alliance.

Preelection polls suggested that most Germans would prefer such a grand coalition to push through difficult belt-tightening, for which neither major party wants to take sole blame. That left-and-right-of-center union also might mute the strengthened voice of the ex-Communists, now called the Party of Democratic Socialism, who might otherwise find enough common ground with the Greens to undermine Schroeder’s reform objectives.

Western allies have expressed wariness about a German government that includes the Greens, who were born of the strident antinuclear movement of the 1970s and remain committed to shutting down nuclear power plants and demilitarizing NATO.

Greens leader Joschka Fischer, however, struck the pose of a partner in Schroeder’s victory, praising “our joint efforts” to bring an end to Kohl’s right-of-center rule. Fischer has made clear that he wants to become vice chancellor and foreign minister in return for providing the balance of parliament seats Schroeder needs to have a majority.

Longtime apprentice Wolfgang Schaeuble, Kohl’s preference to succeed him as CDU leader, seemed to rule out an alliance with the Social Democrats when he told ARD television that he considered a grand coalition “an emergency measure” to be employed only in the event no other partnerships are possible.

But the leader of the powerful Assn. of German Industry, Hans-Olaf Henkel, told the network that a grand coalition “would be better for the economy and for jobs.”

Disillusionment with the costs of integrating the five states of the former East Germany and with unemployment that has been hovering stubbornly close to 11% eroded support for Kohl, especially in the depressed eastern regions, where the jobless rate is close to 20%. It was in the east that Kohl was carried to a narrow victory in 1994, but support for “the chancellor of unity” has soured.

The success of the former Communists in clearing the 5% minimum to enter the Bundestag had been feared by the Social Democrats, as polls showed Schroeder’s party with little more than a 2-percentage-point lead in the last days of campaigning. The victor’s unexpected 6-point spread allows him the luxury of rejecting even a tacit alliance with the former Communists, the PDS, but their staunch opposition to cuts in social welfare could still hamstring Schroeder.

“The chancellor election isn’t everything. If Schroeder wants to push through new laws, he’ll have to negotiate with us if he wants our support,” warned PDS parliamentary leader Gregor Gysi.

Both the PDS and the Greens can be expected to try to block reform of the lavish welfare system.

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Times researchers Reane Oppl in Bonn and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.

* SLOVAKIA SHIFT

Opposition leaders claim victory after two days of voting for Slovakian parliament. A4