Posted on 09/05/2004 12:54:45 PM PDT by knighthawk
BERLIN (AFP) - German voters in the state of Saarland vented their anger at Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's harsh labour market reforms, dealing his Social Democrats their worst defeat there in four decades.
Despite low turnout, voters still left the Social Democrats (SPD) smarting by slashing the party's score by one third from 44.4 percent in the last state election in 1999 to a dismal 30.8 percent, according to provisional results.
It was the worst result for the SPD in Saarland since 1960.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took advantage of weeks of protests that had seen tens of thousands of people rally against Schroeder's labour market reforms to be returned to power with 47.5 percent.
The CDU score was only two points better than they tallied five years ago but will result in an absolute majority of seats -- 27 -- in the 51-seat state assembly.
"Our goal was to achieve an absolute majority," CDU state premier Peter Mueller told ZDF public television. "This is a really big day for the CDU, this is a great result."
SPD state leader Heiko Maas summed up the result as a "clear and bitter defeat" and said that debate surrounding Oskar Lafontaine, a former Schroeder ally turned opponent, had contributed to the party's bad showing.
"Oskar Lafontaine must decide whether he wants in the future to engage himself inside or the outside the SPD," Maas said.
Lafontaine, who hails from the former mining region bordering France and Luxembourg, is from the SPD left and has threatened to join a breakaway party.
He has also campaigned with anti-reform protestors in the streets of eastern Germany, where unemployment in some places is double that in the richer west.
Also taking advantage of Maas' bad luck were the Greens, the junior partner in the federal coalition, which picked up 5.6 percent and will return to the state assembly.
They will be joined there by the liberal Free Democrats, who also passed the five percent barrier needed to win seats in parliament with 5.2 percent.
Falling short of winning seats was the extreme-right National Democratic Party (NPD), with 4.2 percent of the vote according to exit polls.
Turnout was 55.5 percent, down from nearly 69 percent in 1999.
Germans usually send warnings to the federal government during elections in the 16 states, and Saarland was the site of the first of four polls this month likely to turn protest voices into votes against Schroeder.
An opinion poll by ZDF showed that a huge majority of voters in Saarland were concerned about high unemployment. Schroeder's harsh new labour market reforms, to be introduced on January 1, were also a factor.
While the federal government made some minor concessions after the so-called Monday demonstrations began in earnest, particularly in eastern Germany, Schroeder has refused to cede any more ground.
In the east, that stubbornness has translated into new and worrying support for extreme left and right-wing parties.
Fortunately for Schroeder, the concrete changes wrought by Sunday's poll will be negligible. Saarland has only three of 69 seats in the Bundesrat upper house of parliament, where states are represented based on their populations.
But the psychological impact of this hefty defeat could be tremendous.
On September 19, the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony hold elections, where voters are likely to turn against the SPD in numbers and toward the former communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
A week later, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and a long-time SPD bastion, will hold local elections.
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Sounds like they don't want 'welfare reform' over there.....
Wonder if Schroeder will turn to France and Russia for support?
Har! The toothpaste is out of the tube.
Once the scumbag politicians have succeeded in turning an entire populace into government-addicted junkies in order to cement their own positions as the "suppliers" that the junkies get their free stuff from, it is important that those same scumbag politicians do not run out of "supply".
In Germany, they did. And now, naturally, the junkies are mad at their supplier. Har!
And back here in the United States the Democrats want to do for the United States what their counterparts, the Social Democrats (socialists), did for Germany. Thank God for the rise and dominance of the "new media". It was getting very late indeed.
bttt
Sehr Gut. Danke fur der (or is it das) ping.
That's great German. I also get confused about the female/male thing lol.
Bttt
BTTT
Does this mean Germany will continue to support terrorist or support terrorist a lot more?
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