Protests after far-Right successes in Berlin

Press, 31 January 1989, Page 8

Protests after far-Right successes in Berlin

NZPA-Reuter West Berlin The spectre of Rightwing extremism has arisen in the former German capital with a party led by a man who was an officer in Hitler’s SS winning Parliamentary seats in local elections which ousted the ruling coalition. Spontaneous mass protests in the city yesterday with demonstators yelling “Nazis out” suggested the shock emergence of the anti-foreigner Republican party was likely to stir strong emotions in West Berlin and beyond. The vote, by which West Germany’s ruling centre-Right coalition lost

its majority in the city Parliament, was a further blow for West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who was already facing foreign policy problems and under fire at home over planned pension and health service reforms. But the West Berlin Social Democrat (S.P.D.) leader, Walter Momper, who is likely to join a “grand coalition” with Kohl’s Christian Democrats (C.D.U.) in the city, said his party’s jubilation over its strong showing had been dampened by the Republican success. “It is a bad day for the city and it will do nothing for our international reputation,” Mr Momper said

on television. The Republicans, according to provisional results, won 7.5 per cent of the vote and thus gained 10 seats, their first representation in a state Parliament. The result also guarantees them two seats in the West German Federal Parliament from 1990. The Republican’s chairman, Franz Schoenhuber, a former SS officer, said, “Today Germans have shown again the need for a democratically purified patriotism.” The party’s West Berlin leader, a policeman, Bernhard Andres, denied the Republicans were extremist and said they

stood for “German values such as cleanliness and punctuality.” The provisional results showed voters made a nonsense of pre-election opinion polls which predicted that the governing mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, of the C.D.U. would return to power with his liberal Free Democrat (F.D.P.) coalition partners. Mr Diepgen’s party took 37.8 per cent of the votes, 10 percentage points down on its vote four years ago and just ahead of the opposition S.P.D. on 37.3 per cent. Both secured 55 seats in the Parliament under the proportional representation system.