German election revives Cold War anxiety

An estimated 2,000 people protested outside Thuringia's parliament in Erfurt on the eve of a Friday vote that could see a state premier from the Left party elected for the first time in a reunited Germany.

Among other slogans, demonstrators chanted "Stasi raus!" (Stasi out!), declaring their rejection of the former East Germany's dreaded secret police and all that it represented. Protesters had gathered to express concern that Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens have signed a coalition agreement with the Left party - the political successors to East Germany's Communist rulers.

The rise of the Left party has stirred sentiments that had appeared, at least somewhat, to have settled in the 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats have accused the SPD - their junior coalition partners at the national level - and the Greens of betraying victims of East Germany's Communist dictatorship.

"Thank you SPD: the Stasi party in power again," read one banner held aloft by 63-year-old Horst Waldegg. He managed to escape from East Germany via Hungary, but only after spending 28 months in prison at the hands of the regime. In his home district of Gotha, says Waldegg, former members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany are once again in charge.

Changing fortunes for socialists?

State delegates in Thuringia were on Friday expected to elect reformed communist Left party's Bodo Ramelow as state premier - the first time that the Left would be at the helm in a German state in the reunification era.

Although the CDU emerged as the largest political party in the state parliament, it has been unable to forge a parliamentary majority through coalition. There are fears among some in Merkel's party that the prospect of the Left forging coalition alliances with leftist parties might even be realized at a national level.

The Left secured 28 percent of the votes and Ramelow, a former trade unionist from the one-time West German state of Hessen, has described the coalition agreement as a "milestone" and "turning point," stressing that the party itself has embraced democracy and asked for forgiveness.

"I'm not a representative of East Germany and my party isn't a club of nostalgists who want to resurrect East Germany," Ramelow has been quoted as saying.

Keeping a low profile?

Until now, the Left has only served as the junior coalition partner in a number of regional governments, including the local assembly in the capital Berlin. It also holds seats in the national parliament, and has picked up disillusioned SPD members along its political journey through the last two decades.

At least initially, it is thought that the Left would seek to concentrate on its central policies of providing one year of free kindergarten for every child. It would also increase state aid to private schools and, perhaps ironically, seek to limit the powers of the state's intelligence agency to recruit informers.

However, German President Joachim Gauck - a former dissident pastor in East Germany - has gone as far as to break with the neutrality of his office to question the Left's fitness to govern.

"People of my age who lived through the GDR find it quite hard to accept this," said Gauck in a November television interview with the television channel ARD.

rc/bw (AFP, dpa, KNA, dpa)