GERMANY: Probably the greatest boost for the Party of Democratic Socialism has been public anger at the government's economic reforms, writes Derek Scally in Berlin.
Germany's reformed communists are poised to return from the brink of extinction in German state elections this week as voters punish the Social Democratic-led government in Berlin over unpopular reforms.
The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), is expected to top the poll in elections in the state of Brandenburg, neighbouring Berlin, and also do well in another election in Saxony.
"We have always been demonised in the media and written off as dead so many times. Now the media is having a problem trying to explain why we are not dead," said Mr Lothar Bisky, the 63-year old PDS leader, to foreign journalists in Berlin.
The return of the PDS marks a dramatic reversal of fortune after a slump in the 2002 general election left it with just two seats and no party faction in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.
Two years on, the party attracted 6 per cent support in the June European elections, its highest ever result in a national poll, and 26 per cent last month in state elections in the eastern state of Thuringia.
Probably the greatest boost for the party has been public anger at the government's economic reforms, proposed by and named after a government commission headed by Volkswagen boss Peter Hartz.
The most unpopular of the "Hartz reforms" will cut dole payments from next January and subject them to a means test, while forcing the unemployed to take up low-paid work.
The anti-reform position of the PDS has led to it being derided as the "Party of Dialectical Opportunism" in one magazine, but its popularity continues to rise.
"Reforms are necessary, but reforms do not have to always affect the little man first. For a year we have been saying that Hartz is poison for the east," said Mr Bisky, a likeable figure and the former head of the Babelsberg Film Academy. "Hartz will not create a single job." Chancellor Schröder has attacked his reform opponents, and called "perverse" the similar anti-reform position shared by the PDS and Christian Democrats (CDU).
Mr Bisky rejects this position and terms a "falsehood" the warning by Mr Schröder of a new east-west rift in Germany caused by the economic slump and the reform programme.
"There is not east and west, it's about the people on top and the people down below, it's about the life conditions of the little man in east and west," he said. "The east hasn't won and the taxpayers in the west financing the reconstruction of the east are not the winners either. The winners are large western German corporations."
The PDS is already a coalition partner in governments in the city-state of Berlin and the northern state of Lower Pomerania. Recent polls indicate the PDS could attract around 36 per cent support in Brandenburg in the weekend state election, making it the likely senior partner in a coalition with the SPD, while in Saxony the party is expected to win around 26 per cent of the vote.
Political analysts are dismissive of the growing strength of the PDS, with one calling the PDS "less a party than a protest movement" gathering together "everyone who mistrusts the system and politics".
PDS leaders admit the same privately, but say long-term strength could come from the plan of left-wing SPD members disaffected by the reforms to form a new splinter party, possibly headed by Mr Oskar Lafontaine, the former SPD finance minister who has become Chancellor Schröder's most vociferous critic.
Mr Bisky has suggested in interviews that Mr Lafontaine could be a natural ally: his new left-wing party could gain in western states where the PDS is weak, while the PDS would gain support in the east by pressing its home advantage. The two parties could then pool their strength in parliament. "It would be good and I don't want to say anything against Mr Lafontaine because what he is saying at the moment is sensible," said Mr Bisky.
The PDS leader says that the main political parties and the observers have underestimated the fury of easterners, which has been brewing for 15 years.
In the face of continued economic stagnation and unemployment double the national average of 10.5 per cent, easterners' fury finally bubbled to the surface through the reform demonstrations, with as many as 70,000 people taking to the streets across the country.
"We had the unification euphoria with Kohl promising blossoming landscapes and Schröder promising to halve the unemployment and his Priority East programme," says Mr Bisky. "Now we have the Hartz reforms and the cuts, and that's just too much." Mr Bisky, an SED member and former Stasi informer with the codename "Bienert", dismisses his critics' attempts to dragging up his party's past.
"Any accusations that we are communist are simply attempts to discredit us," he says. "We have a vision of a democratic, socialist and just society that, in the distant future, will be possible."