Former Communists Teetering on the Edge

In the many campaign posters that have popped up across the eastern part of Berlin over the past few months, those from the Party of Democratic Socialism stand out.

The reason has little to with the slogans, photos or promises featured and everything to do with the fact that unlike the posters of Germany’s major parties, they haven’t been vandalized as much.

The fact isn’t surprising. The successor to East Germany’s communist party, the leftist PDS, has always enjoyed a strong power base in the eastern part of the country. Their share of the national vote increasing with each election since reunification and the party’s birth in 1990.

But this Sunday, the PDS is facing a fight for its political survival on the national level following a dramatic drop in popularity over the past four years.

PDS' moment of truth fast approaching

If the former communists get less than five percent of the national vote, they will be barred from having representatives in the national parliament. Current polls put them at around 4.5 percent.

The PDS’ only chances then lie in Germany’s complicated two vote system. If PDS candidates from three different constituencies nationwide beat out all other party candidates, then the party gets representation in parliament.

Even on that front, the PDS faces a bitter fight.

The reasons, say political analysts and editorialists, have a lot to do with the competence they’ve shown – or not shown – in the political chances they’ve had as the party's popularity has grown. Once a party that could rely on its reputation as a pacifist champion of East Germans and social services to win votes, the PDS is finding more responsibility means more expectations from their voter basis, wrote a recent editorial in the left-leaning “Tageszeitung”.

“Voters, above all in East Germany, want to know exactly how the PDS will create jobs, guarantee social services and revitalize the budget,” the newspaper wrote. “Even from the PDS, they expect more than just populistic slogans and ideological visions, they expect competence and concepts.”

Berlin disaster leads to lost votes

Chances to display those features have so far been less than successful. The controversial coalition government the PDS formed with the Social Democratic Party in Berlin last year after netting record results in both the East and the West part of the city has fizzled.

When the party’s charismatic figurehead and Berlin’s economic minister Gregor Gysi (photo) became embroiled in a frequent flyer mile scandal seven weeks ago, the news got worse. The scandal led to Gysi’s resignation and marked the beginning of a gradual slide in popularity among voters across the East.

“I will never forgive myself,” Gysi said, upon announcing his resignation from the political stage.

Now the bald-headed, bespectacled Gysi is back, criss-crossing Germany, to rally the party’s 90,000-member base and potential PDS voters. Gysi’s message, at least among the 86,000 voters in the east, is simple.

A parliament without the PDS would be “a mental and cultural defeat for the people in the new states.”

PDS tough to stomach for major parties

But winning the eastern vote will be harder this time around, say strategists.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s leadership during the devastating floods in eastern Germany have won him points against his conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber and possibly also against the PDS. And the chancellor’s pledge not to involve Germany in any US-led “adventures” in Iraq have stolen some limelight away from the PDS’ attempt to profile itself as the only legitimate pacifist party around.

Neither Schröder nor Stoiber’s Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union bloc would like to see the PDS in the next parliament. Should the former communists cross the 5 percent hurdle, current polls indicate CDU or the SPD would not have the percentages to form coalitions with their preferred junior partners - in the CDU’s case, the liberal Free Democrats, in the SPD, the Green Party.

Both Schröder and Stoiber have ruled out including the PDS in any of their coalition governments. The result could be a “grand” coalition bringing together the SPD and CDU, which both Stoiber and Schröder find similarly discomforting.