BBC NEWS - Germany 'set for early election'

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says he wants a general election this autumn - a year early - after his party lost a key powerbase in local polls. He made the announcement after his Social Democrats (SPD) lost the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which they had held for 39 years.

AFP - Gerhard Schroeder's
SPD has been haunted by
unemployment figures

"The political support for our reforms to continue has been called into question," Mr Schroeder said. The opposition had focused on the huge unemployment in the German state. With five million unemployed citizens across Germany as a whole, the general election may be decided on the same issue. The SPD is also lagging behind in national polls.

Mr Schroeder's Social Democrat-led government not only lost its traditional powerbase, but it now has so few seats in the Bundesrat upper house of parliament that its ability to actively govern is massively diminished.

'Sensational results'

The SPD showing in North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most populous state - was far worse than had been expected. Exit polls carried by state television channels ZDF and ARD showed the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) comfortably ahead with 45% of the vote. The SPD trailed with 37.5%.

BBC NEWS: In-Depth Coverage

Both Schroeder for the SPD and Joska Fischer, darling of the left-wing Green Party, will be the candidates in coming general election. The call for early elections by the SPD leaders, reached the Green Party just moments before the announcement to the public.

Joschka Fischer

I would appreciate a short review by our BRD members, as I interpret from Dutch television for early analysis. The Dutch reporters do have an excellent take on the issues and German politics, as the Dutch are highly dependent on their big neighbor’s economic fortunes. Major trade with Germany, and the Port of Rotterdam is largely for transport to the industrial heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia.

IMHO, in the last general election Schroeder got the victory thanks to the floods of Dresden and his timely anti-Iraq War remarks that pissed off Bush and Rummy. I still recall very vividly the pointed speech by Joska Fischer, made during a visit by Donald Rumsfeld. “Where is the evidence? I am not convinced by what you have shown me.” Was great and brave, although it didn’t impress Rummy a bit. It was an early challenge of many more to come, but Rummy just does his thing: Wasting $$$ in Iraq, and saving $$$ at home by slashing military bases and hurting local economies with his policy.

Today I will have a chance to follow the German news outlets via free-to-air satellite TV broadcasts. Need to concentrate, but usually able to catch most of the German language. BTW long time friends and neighbors here in The Hague are from German origin, so I often get full-fledged accounts from their family visits to Dresden and other cities.

DEUTSCHE WELLE Radio-TV Website (en)

SPD Facing State Election Blow

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's
Social Democrats -SPD- appear to be heading
for a potentially devastating defeat in a
regional election in the industrial state of
North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday.

In the seven years since Schröder came to power, a majority of Germany's states have switched to the conservatives. With German unemployment hovering around the five million mark for the first time since World War II, North Rhine-Westphalia accounts for around 1.1 million of the jobless and in some of the most blighted areas the unemployment rate tops 30 percent.

Working-class voters angry

Judging by people gathered for an SPD rally in the industrial city of Wuppertal on Wednesday, Schröder's party has lost the trust of working-class voters, the traditional bedrock of their support. Labor market reforms introduced in January this year have added to the pain for many and alienated others. Else Koch, 83, said she had supported the SPD ever since she was eligible to vote, but this year she would abstain in protest at their policies.

SPD hurt by the economy

The CDU's lead candidate, Jürgen Rüttgers, has sought to hammer home the effects of the weak economy at every opportunity. "Red-green is the coalition of mass unemployment," Rüttgers, an often uncharismatic and blundering politician, said on Tuesday during a US-style head-to-head debate with the state's leader, Peer Steinbrück of the SPD.

Peer Steinbrück (SPD) and Jürgen Rüttgers (CDU)

Deutsche-Welle TV News – English

BERLIN, MAY 19, 2005 — The creator of a computer Trojan horse that unleashed a torrent of far-right spam e-mail messages in Germany this week may be trying to influence the outcome of the election Sunday in North Rhine-Westphalia, according to a spokesman for an antivirus company.

Computers infected with the Trojan horse, Sober.q, unwittingly sent thousands of spam e-mails bearing links to the Web site of the National Democratic Party, which espouses "Germany for Germans," the death penalty for some drug dealers and an end to the right of asylum.

The antivirus company's spokesman, Christoph Hardy, who works for the German unit of Sophos, the British concern, said the last wave of neo-Nazi spam to hit Germany occurred in September, shortly before the last round of city and town elections in North Rhine-Westphalia [NRW]. "It was probably generated by someone who is sympathetic to the far right, trying to create anger and a protest vote in Sunday's election."

Sober.q accounted for 84 percent of all e-mail spam reports in Germany on Tuesday, said Hardy, adding that Sophos engineers first detected the Trojan horse, or worm, at 11:46 a.m. on Monday.

A spokeswoman for the Bundeskriminalamt, the national law-enforcement agency, said it was investigating the complaints.