Free Republic

BERLIN—In a redrawn political landscape dominated by an alliance between Germany's two main parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel's most prominent opponent is now a 66-year-old former communist with a silver tongue and dreams of finally ending his party's fringe status. Gregor Gysi, a Berlin lawyer, is parliamentary leader of the radical Left Party—the largest opposition party remaining in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag. That accords him the right to respond first to Ms. Merkel after she addresses lawmakers—a

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's reform communist PDS party voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining forces with a new far-left party on Sunday and agreed to change their name to The Left Party for a general election in September. The party, which pollsters forecast could win 12 percent of the vote, has the backing of about 30 percent in the formerly communist east and has moved ahead of the Christian Democrats as the most popular party in the region. Delegates to an extraordinary PDS party congress in Berlin on Sunday supported the measure by 74.6 percent to easily clear a two-thirds...

<p>BERLIN--It's been more than 12 years since the Berlin Wall fell, but the ghosts of Communism still haunt this once-divided city.</p> <p>Germany holds national elections on Sept. 22, and the two major political parties, the conservative Christian Democrats and the governing left-leaning Social Democrats, are close in the polls, with the CDU holding a three- to five-point lead.</p>