Socialists divided over power deal with former communists

GERMANY: Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) face an agonising decision this weekend over whether to break a long-standing taboo and co-operate with the post-communist Left Party.

The decision has divided the SPD leadership and overshadowed tomorrow's election in the city-state of Hamburg, Germany's second largest city.

The party has tried to ignore the issue since the PDS, the successor to East Germany's ruling SED, merged with disaffected Social Democrats last year to form the Left Party. The new party, headed by former SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine, is already Germany's third political force.

Now a recent state election in Hesse has forced the SPD's hand. It finished neck and neck with its political rival, the Christian Democrats (CDU), but after weeks of fruitless coalition talks both parties still lack enough seats for their coalition of choice.

That prompted SPD leader Kurt Beck to indirectly open the door to the Left Party by saying he still ruled out accepting "active" coalition support from the party.

"There will be no kind of agreements or special arrangements with the Left," he said, declining to rule out the possibility that the SPD could take office in Hesse with "passive" Left Party support.

Mr Beck's apparent change of tactics caught his party colleagues in Berlin off guard and has also shaken SPD leaders in Hamburg, who worry that talk of co-operating with the Left will alienate SPD voters tomorrow.

With 13 per cent poll support, the Left Party is now well ahead of the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, who each have 9 per cent.

The Left is, however, still regularly overtaken by its past, as when one of its politicians was captured on film last week trying to justify the Berlin Wall.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times