Kohl’s fate to be decided today

BONN, Sept 26: Germany goes to polls tomorrow with an estimated 30 per cent undecided voters holding the key to whether Europe's largest ...

BONN, Sept 26: Germany goes to polls tomorrow with an estimated 30 per cent undecided voters holding the key to whether Europe’s largest country would usher in a change from Helmut Kohl’s uninterrupted 16-year rule or give a record fifth term for the incumbent Chancellor.

A dead heat is on cards as Kohl’s Christian Democrats, in a typical fightback, narrowed down the lead of rival Social Democrats (SPD) of fancied Gerhard Schroder to less than two percentage points in opinion polls in the closest ever elections in the history of Germany since 1949.

Pollsters predicted three probable scenarios as the election campaign came to an end today.

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No single party has ever got a majority in the national elections and it has always been coalition governments headed by Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats at the helm of affairs except for a brief phase of grand coalition of these rival parties in the late sixties.

The first scenario is a “red-green” coalition of Social Democrats hoping to assume officeafter being in opposition for 16 years along with the environmentalist Greens Party.

The second is a grand coalition of rival parties — CDU and SPD, which is being widely favoured by a significant number of the electorate in view of the expected fragmented verdict.

The third scenario is the incumbent coalition of CDU and its Bavarian sister party, CSU along with Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel’s Free Democrats dramatically retaining power in an upset victory proving all pollsters wrong.

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The results of recent state elections in Bavaria which gave CSU another four-year term to rule the second largest state, has galvanised the struggling election campaign of Kohl, who has been Germany’s longest ever post-war Chancellor.

Though issues relating to unemployment and tax reforms were brought into focus in the election campaign, immigration related matters were trumped up by all major political parties towards the last weeks of the campaign to consolidate their vote banks after the dramatic performance of aultra rightist party in a state election in April.

The ultra rightist party made a shocking entry into the Parliament of Saxony Anhalt securing 12 per cent of the votes riding on anti-foreigner sentiments in East Germany. The performance of the party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which is the reformed communist party of East Germany, is being keenly watched as never before because they could tilt the balance on the nature of coalition to rule Germany.

Under a complex system to decide the winners, 656 members will be returned to the 14th Bundestag (federal parliament) by a dual procedure with half of them being directly elected in the constituencies and the other half indirectly by a proportional method where the electorate give their nod to a particular party.