[Sosfbay-discuss] Greens and other Opposition gain in German elections

[JamBoi]

Opposition Gains in Germany
Date:	Mon, 14 May 2007 15:06:18 -0700 (PDT)
Opposition Gains in Germany
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 14, 2007
Filed at 2:30 a.m. ET
BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's center-left Social Democrats
won an election in the country's smallest state
Sunday, a result that left them to choose whether to
end a regional ''grand coalition'' which mirrors the
national government.
While the Social Democrats, or SPD, maintained their
decades-long hold on the northwestern city-state of
Bremen, it was not an entirely satisfying victory for
a party that is struggling nationally.
Both Germany's governing parties shed votes compared
with the last state election in 2003. There were gains
for the opposition Greens and success for the new Left
Party, which entered a state parliament in former West
Germany for the first time.
The SPD won 36.8 percent of the vote, down from 42.3
percent four years ago, according to final official
results. The Christian Democratic Union declined to
25.7 percent from 29.8 percent.
The Greens scored 16.4 percent, while the Left Party
took 8.4 percent and the business-friendly Free
Democrats 6 percent.
The SPD won 33 seats, the CDU 23 and the Greens 14,
with seven going to the Left Party and five to the
Free Democrats. The far-right German People's Union,
whose vote share was steady at 2.3 percent, retained
one seat.
For the last 12 years, the SPD has governed Bremen in
a left-right coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservative Christian Democratic Union, the same
combination that forms the federal government.
The result in Bremen allows the SPD either to continue
the coalition or turn to the Greens, reviving a
center-left alliance that ran Germany under former
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder until 2005.
Social Democratic Mayor Jens Boehrnsen left open his
choice. ''We will hold talks with those who come into
consideration -- that is ... the CDU and the Greens,
but not the Left Party,'' he said.
Nationally, the SPD is an equal partner in Merkel's
government, but it trails in polls as it struggles to
energize supporters and match the conservative
chancellor's popularity.
The Bremen vote, the only state election this year,
comes amid persistent bickering in the national
coalition.
Merkel's CDU urged the Social Democrats to stick with
them in Bremen. General secretary Ronald Pofalla said
Germans voted out the SPD-Greens combination in 2005
because it ''stands for mass unemployment and
recession.''
Bremen has the highest unemployment of any western
German state, at 13.1 percent. It remained an SPD
stronghold even as the party suffered repeated
reverses in state votes under Schroeder.
Still, Sunday's result underlined the threat it faces
from the left. The Left Party -- a combination of
former Social Democrats disillusioned by economic
reform and former East German communists -- did better
than expected.
The party, which won seats in the federal parliament
in 2005, had previously succeeded at state level only
in the ex-communist east.
''We are now a federal German force, and Bremen proves
that,'' said Gregor Gysi, the party's co-leader in the
federal parliament.
Karl-Rudolf Korte, professor of political science at
the University of Duisburg-Essen, said the smaller
parties' strong performance was ''typical for
elections in the slipstream of a 'grand coalition.'''
''The erosion of the major parties is continuing,'' he
said.
Some 487,000 people were eligible to vote for the
83-seat state legislature. Turnout was a lackluster
57.6 percent.

___________________

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