KOHL TRIUMPHS IN ALL-GERMAN VOTE

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) December 3, 1990 | Jonathan Kaufman, Globe Staff BERLIN – Riding a wave of pro-unification sentiment, Chancellor Helmut Kohl led his party to victory yesterday in the first free elections in a united Germany in almost 60 years.

Kohl fulfilled his ambition of becoming the first democratically elected chancellor of a united Germany since Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. His victory crushed the opposition Social Democrats, who had their worst showing since 1957, and also returned control of Berlin to Kohl’s Christian Democratic Party.

The wave of pro-unification sentiment also swamped the Greens, the pioneering German environmental party, which last night was failing to win enough votes to clear the 5 percent hurdle to enter the German Parliament.

Seats in Parliament will be granted to the former East German communists, now called the Party of Democratic Socialism, and a coalition of East German opposition groups and environmentalists who toppled the communists, even though they received less than 2 percent of the vote. They gained the seats because of a change in German election law to help parties based in what used to be East Germany.

Television projections last night showed Kohl’s Christian Democrats with 44.1 percent of the vote, compared with 33.5 percent for the Social Democrats. The Free Democrats, who formed a coalition with Kohl, won 10.9 percent.

Television projections showed Kohl’s party holding a commanding majority in Parliament, with 394 seats to the Social Democrats’ 241.

“This is a day of happiness,” said a buoyant Kohl, who claimed victory just 90 minutes after the polls closed. “We take on a very large responsibility. We know that the next four years will be difficult years. But we can also take on and do justice to this responsibility.” In a magnanimous mood, Kohl smiled and bounced on his feet as he answered questions from reporters, and later shook hands for the first time with Gregor Gysi, the head of the former East German Communist Party. site kohls printable coupons

“Well, we have lost the election,” said Social Democratic leader Oskar Lafontaine, who survived an assassination attempt early in the campaign and never seriously challenged Kohl in the polls.

“Maybe there was no more to be gained in the present situation,” Lafontaine said. “The script was in the hands of the Kohl government.” The biggest surprise of the night was the poor showing of the Greens, who in the 1987 general election won more than 8 percent of the vote and 42 seats in Parliament. They were sometimes talked of as a future government partner for the Social Democrats. In the last four years, however, all the major parties adopted Green positions on the environment, and the Greens themselves were often split by bitter feuding.

Last year, when the rush for unification began, the Greens dawdled in endorsing it. This sealed their electoral fate, analysts said last night.

Perhaps the sweetest victory for Kohl was recapturing control of Berlin, Germany’s capital. Long known as “Red Berlin,” a hotbed of radical and alternative politics, Berlin had been governed since last year by a coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens. When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, the Social Democratic mayor, Walter Momper, took center stage on international television. When Kohl rushed to Berlin soon after the Wall fell, he was booed by hostile crowds.

Yesterday, however, the Christian Democrats defeated the Social Democrats in Berlin and seemed likely to form a center-right coalition to run the united city.

“I have another reason to be happy tonight and that is our victory in Berlin,” Kohl told supporters, his voice rising with emotion.

Momper blamed fierce rioting by squatters last month and squabbles between his Social Democrats and the Greens for the loss.

Voting for the Christian Democrats could help Berlin in its bid to become Germany’s seat of government as well as its capital. The new Parliament will decide whether to move government offices from Bonn to Berlin, and Kohl may want to bolster his party’s political fortunes in the city by making it Germany’s full-time capital once again.

Kohl’s Christian Democrats did equally well in eastern and western Germany.

The Social Democrats did extremely poorly in the east, even though they tried to style themselves as the defenders of the poor and unemployed. Lafontaine’s relentless attacks on the cost of unification made many easterners feel that he just did not like them.

The communists continued to lose support, winning just 8.6 percent of the vote in what used to be East Germany — down from the 16 percent they won in East German elections in March. They won a negligible percentage of West German votes and only 2 percent of the overall vote, but under special rules will be allowed to enter the Parliament.

In eastern Berlin, the seat of communist power for 45 years, the communists won 24 percent of the vote.

“It’s not the quantity of the votes but the quality of the vote that counts,” Gysi said. “We have to become a more truly socialist party.” Ironically, the former communists won 14 parliamentary seats compared with just 7 seats won by the opposition groups that toppled them and ran under the banner Alliance ’90. With the elimination of the Greens, these two parties will now become unlikely bedfellows at the left end of the German Parliament. kohlsprintablecouponsnow.net kohls printable coupons

“We are in the opposition now as we used to always be,” said Sebastian Pflugbeil, an Alliance ’90 spokesman, at a gloomy election-night party.

Although the Social Democrats tried to make taxes and the cost of unification the main issue of the campaign, it was the unification of Germany and the mantle it placed upon Kohl as the “chancellor of German unity” that carried the election.

Having long been dismissed as a provincial politician, Kohl showed a deft combination of shrewdness and vision in pushing through German unity in less than a year’s time, winning over skeptics in Europe, the United States and, most important, the Soviet Union.

On the campaign trail Kohl showed increasing confidence, and many analysts here said they expect him now to take a leading international role, especially in efforts to unite Europe economically and politically.

Having come to power in October 1982 as the political contemporary of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Kohl has outlasted both. He has also built a good working relationship with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, promising the Soviet leader financial and humanitarian aid.

Last week, Kohl took a break from campaigning to speak on a telethon raising money and food aid for the Soviet Union.

KAUFMA;12/02 NKELLY;12/26,15:07 GERMAN03 Caption: PHOTO German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his wife, Hannalore, celebrate in Bonn yesterday after his election victory. / AP PHOTO Jonathan Kaufman, Globe Staff