Former communists look for votes in Berlin

Associated Press

BERLIN — For the first time since the Berlin Wall fell, former East German communists are reaching for power in the German capital, in an election likely to humiliate the once-dominant conservatives.

Social Democrat Klaus Wowereit, the first openly gay mayor of a German metropolis, is the front-runner after a slick campaign in which he promised the 2.4 million voters a "new beginning" after a decade of deepening economic trouble in the once-divided city.

But debate over how to tackle the city’s $36 billion debt was buried ahead of Sunday’s vote by bickering over whether the reformed communists are fit to govern.

Backed by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who heads the Social Democrats, Wowereit has refused to rule out an alliance with them.

Wowereit, 48, has battled conservative businessman Frank Steffel, 35, and the charismatic Gregor Gysi, a Berlin lawyer who used to head the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism.

Yet, the often bitter campaign lost much of its spark after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Campaigning was overshadowed by "events in America and then Afghanistan … so that Berlin issues haven’t had the prominence they deserved," Steffel said Wednesday.

Following anthrax scares, city authorities have ordered ballot helpers to wear rubber gloves and face masks Sunday night. Police will be on heightened alert.

Less than a year before national elections, the ballot amounts to a test for Schroeder’s government of Social Democrats and Greens.

Those two parties joined forces with the ex-communists in June to oust Berlin’s longstanding Christian Democratic mayor in a city parliament vote after a sleaze scandal erupted at a city-controlled bank. Fresh elections then were called.

The scandal badly tarnished the conservatives, already hurt by an earlier slush fund affair involving former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Much of their campaign focused on painting the ex-communists as closet Stalinists.

Gysi argues that sharing power in Berlin would help bridge the continuing gap in attitudes between east and west Germany, which are most jarring in the capital.

"I stand for bridges, not for walls," he said recently.

But after a promising start, polls predict little advance for his party, beyond the nearly 18 percent it scored in the last city election in 1999.

Wowereit is expected to boost his party’s share to about 36 percent from 22 percent. But the Greens are stagnating at about 10 percent, suggesting Wowereit would need a third partner to govern.

Polls show the Christian Democrats slumping to about 26 percent from more than 40 percent.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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