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Schroeder
is seen shortly after hearing the first projected results for
German federal elections in Berlin
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BERLIN,
September 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – German Muslims as
well as other minorities breathed a sigh of relief as Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder’s ruling center-left coalition won a razor-thin victory
Monday, September 23, after a nail biting finish to the closest national
election race in German history.
A
night of twists and turns saw the likely outcome veer one way, then the
other before official provisional results released at 3:30 am (0130 GMT)
showed his Social Democrats just shading the opposition Christian Union
by 8,864 votes nationwide, with both parties being credited with 38.5
percent of the popular vote following Sunday’s election, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
That
was enough to put the SPD narrowly ahead in terms of seats in parliament
with 251 compared to 248 for the CDU/CSU.
The
Greens, the junior partners in Schroeder’s coalition, cemented victory
with a surprisingly strong 8.6 percent, their highest ever score in a
national election, giving them 55 seats.
It
was a bad night for the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), with whom
conservative leader Edmund Stoiber had been hoping to form a government.
It finished in fourth place with 7.4 percent and 47 seats.
The
red-green majority thus has a total of 306 seats in the Bundestag, or
lower house of parliament, with the CDU/CSU and FDP combined reaching
295 out of the total 603 seats available.
The
remaining two seats went to the former communist Party of Democratic
Socialism (PDS). Turnout was 79.1 percent of the 61.2 million registered
voters, some three points lower than in the last federal election in
1998.
The
narrow margin of victory is a perilously thin basis on which to push
through any of the major reforms Germany desperately needs to tackle
chronic unemployment and ailing health care and education systems.
“We
have difficult times ahead of us but we will get through them
together,” Schroeder said as he appeared at SPD headquarters alongside
a jubilant Joschka Fischer, his foreign minister and the Greens’
figurehead.
The
mood was light. “It was a mistake to let him take the stage here,”
the chancellor quipped, as SPD supporters roared their thanks to
Fischer. Fischer demurred: “One should stay modest in
victory.”
Stoiber
appeared to accept the inevitability of defeat before the final results
were announced, saying there was “perhaps a little piece of justice
that for a few more months Schroeder will have to endure (the
consequences of) everything he has done.”
“Should
we not be able to form a government because of these results, the
Schroeder government will only be able to rule for a short time,” he
said.
And
he promised supporters in his Munich fiefdom: “By the end of the year
I will form the new government.”
He
had been quick to claim victory only a few hours earlier however, as the
first estimates showed his CDU/CSU narrowly in front.
As
for the FDP, its leader Guido Westerwelle apportioned some of the blame
for its showing on ugly headlines following allegedly anti-Semitic
comments made by his deputy.
Schroeder
acknowledged that his party’s losses in voter support compared to
1998, when it garnered 40.9 percent of the vote, were “very
painful”.
“Of
course it’s my responsibility,” said the chancellor, who is also
party leader. “If not mine, whose?”
Among
the key issues in the heated campaign were how to inject new vigor into
Germany’s flagging economy, Europe’s biggest; tackling unemployment,
which currently stands at over four million; and repairing relations
with the United States soured by Schroeder’s categorical refusal to
join any attack on Iraq.
Stoiber,
60, campaigned as a man able to bring down joblessness and repair the
damage he said had been done to the economy.
Stoiber
also called for tightening immigration rules, under his declared slogan;
“Less immigration, More integration”.
However
Schroeder’s assured response to the floods crisis in the country’s
east last month and his anti-war stance on Iraq saw him storming back
after lagging in earlier opinion polls.
The
election was a disaster for the PDS, the inheritors of the East German
monopoly that built the Berlin Wall.
Despite
getting two candidates elected directly, the party was wiped out as a
parliamentary group after failing, for the first time since Germany was
reunified in 1990, to reach the five-percent barrier needed to get into
the Bundestag.
At
least the party can look forward to a share of power in the northeast
state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which was holding regional
election on the same day as the national vote.
There,
the existing SPD and PDS coalition won up to 57 percent of the vote and
will continue in government, state premier Harald Ringstorff said.
