-Caveat Lector- Rise of Red Ghosts taunts Schröder By Tony Allen-Mills in Berlin 10-10-99 To the long list of potentially disruptive difficulties facing Gerhard Schröder, Germany's dangerously accident-prone chancellor, could last week be added a curvaceous blonde cabaret singer with a voice like a chainsaw and an unusual taste for cheerful German socialist anthems such as Fritz the Tractor Driver and My Mother is an Office Manager. As Schröder braced himself for yet another election upset in today's regional polls in Berlin, audiences in the capital were flocking to Cornelia Schirmer's spirited rendering of the ideological hits from the long-defunct charts of formerly communist East Germany. Ten years after the fall of the Wall, a wave of Ossi (eastern) nostalgia is finding a new political expression that threatens to cause serious embarrassment for Schröder's attempts to join Tony Blair in the so-called new middle of European politics. After an embarrassing sequence of regional election defeats and an outbreak of brutal infighting in his Social Democratic party (SPD), Schröder is battling this weekend to avert humiliation in a small but symbolic fight for control of the newly restored German capital. The chancellor's main worry is not his traditional right-wing rival, the Christian Democratic Union - a substantial CDU victory in Berlin is regarded as a foregone conclusion. The real threat comes from a ghost. >From the ashes of East German communism, an old party with new ideas is beginning to rise to heights of influence and respectability that few could have imagined when the late Erich Honecker's regime collapsed in ignominy in 1989. The reconstructed communist leaders of eastern Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) may tonight find themselves in the extraordinary position of being more popular in Berlin than Schröder' s SPD. Only a few opinion-poll percentage points separate the two parties in the battle for second place behind the CDU, and one private poll last week put the PDS narrowly ahead with more than 20% of the vote. "I don't know if it can happen," said Rainer Oschmann, a PDS spokesman. "But if it does, it will be an absolute sensation." The PDS owes its remarkable rise to a combination of factors from the SPD's collapsing political credibility to the lingering Ossi phenomenon dubbed Ostalgie - a spreading nostalgia for a distinctive east German identity that was crushed by the arrival of the all-conquering west German D-mark. After a decade of exposure to the grimmer realities of the capitalist condition-notably job losses, factory closures and the arrival of new bosses from the west-many easterners have settled on the PDS as the only party uncontaminated by supercilious western brutalism. "We are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the only authentic East German party voice," said Oschmann. Despite its roots in a disgraced regime that relied heavily on the secret policemen of the Stasi, the PDS has been cementing a powerful base this year on the left of the German establishment. Shunned by most western voters, the party has none the less joined a government coalition in the eastern state of Mecklenburg -West Pomerania. It beat the SPD into third place in Thuringia and Saxony, and now claims the support of more than 40% of voters in eastern Berlin. Last week the PDS attracted its first defector from the SPD' s parliamentary ranks, and officials are gleefully promoting the party as the logical home for disgruntled supporters of Oskar Lafontaine, the leftist former finance minister whose resignation from the government - and subsequent rubbishing of Schröder in a book to be published this week - have divided the SPD. In excerpts from the book 'The Heart Beats on the Left', Lafontaine argued last week that the PDS would make a logical coalition partner for the SPD in a future government. Delighted by this, PDS officials promptly invited Lafontaine to join their ranks. The arrival on the German scene of a newly confident and successful left-wing force rooted in the east but with ambitions to spread to the west further deepens Schröder' s dilemma as he attempts to force through a £10 billion package of spending cuts to stabilise the German economy. Accused by SPD stalwarts of ditching traditional social values to appease financial markets, the chancellor faces the daunting challenge of avoiding a party split while implementing a divisive austerity programme that will cut jobless benefits and restrict pensions. Rising from his sick bed last week, the flu-stricken chancellor showed no sign of retreat as he harangued a metalworkers' union congress in Hamburg. Although his performance won some favourable media reviews, it is at the ballot box that Schröder faces his sternest test. A poor performance in Berlin today may convince the SPD' s party managers that their chancellor is a liability. There are already signs that Rudolf Scharping, the SPD defence minister, is manoeuvring to replace his boss. At a cabinet meeting last week, he reportedly threatened to resign, telling the chancellor he was not up to the job. "You're the last one to talk," Schröder retorted angrily. The Times DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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