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Last Updated: Nov 2nd, 2009 - 17:32:57 |
Oskar Lafontaine could hardly have picked a more politically correct venue from which to launch a personal campaign to topple Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from power in Germany's forthcoming general election.
The former German finance minister, once described by Britain's Sun newspaper as "The most dangerous man in Europe", appeared in pouring rain last week in front of a 40-ton, Soviet-made bronze head of Karl Marx that survives as a "souvenir of communist culture" in the east German city of Chemnitz.
Before him stood the victims of Mr Schröder's unpopular attempt to reform the country's ailing economy and turn back the tide of 1930s-scale unemployment: a 2,000-strong crowd of elderly former East German communists, the jobless social-security recipients, and anti-globalisation activists.
Among the red banners, umbrellas and slogans demanding "social justice" was a small girl brandishing a placard that read: "Get rid of Schröder, the bosses' Chancellor who is ruining my life as a child".
His chin jutting towards the lead-grey heavens, "Red Oskar", the renegade former Social Democrat turned left-wing bogeyman, did his best to confirm the long-held convictions of those present with a withering assault on the near-criminal shortcomings of Mr Schröder's government.
Nothing was spared in his invective. Germany's "neo-liberal" political elite had allowed the nation's public morals to become "rotten and depraved". It had hoodwinked workers into believing that industry had to shed thousands of jobs if it were to remain profitable.
Politicians in the pay of big business had come up with the "gigantic lie" that Germany's welfare state was no longer affordable. The European Union - once sacrosanct for all politicians except the neo-Nazi far right - had allowed Germany to become swamped with eastern Europeans who were depriving German workers of jobs.
"We are the people," insisted "Red Oskar", borrowing the popular slogan that brought down communist East Germany's regime 15 years ago. "We are not the pawns of an industrial class that is only interested in furthering its own ends," he added.
It was what the crowd wanted to hear. "Yes, I think Oskar has a good chance in the election," said Bernd Schmidtbauer, 62, a former employee of a now-defunct communist computer-chip firm. "He is one of the only politicians left with the guts to tell the truth," he added.
The performance was Mr Lafontaine's opening gambit in what he hopes will be his return to the forefront of German politics after six years in the wilderness. Last month, the former protégé of Willy Brandt turned in the Social Democrat Party card that he had held for 39 years. Yesterday he confirmed his decision to run as a candidate for the "Democratic Left", a new alliance of former communists and disaffected ex-Social Democrats in the election.
The alliance has alarmed the SPD. Early opinion polls predict that the "Democratic Left" could win anything from 9 to 18 per cent of the vote in September. The consequences could be devastating for the party that produced such post-war political icons as Brandt and Helmut Schmidt.
Several commentators have forecast a worst-case scenario in which the increasingly divided Social Democrats become irrevocably weakened by the "Democratic Left" and consigned to the sidelines of power for decades.
For Oskar Lafontaine, such an outcome would be the sweetest of political triumphs. The impending election marks the final battle in his personal vendetta against Mr Schröder "I will do everything to make sure that he loses," he is reported to have told close friends.
His return to the hustings is also an attempt to reverse a dramatic fall from grace. In 1990 Mr Lafontaine was the SPD candidate who challenged the legendary "unification Chancellor" Helmut Kohl in a general election. Although he lost, he masterminded a party putsch five years later that ensured him the role of party leader with a mission to restore the Social Democrats to power after more than a decade of conservative rule. By the summer of 1997, Mr Lafontaine and Mr Schröder appeared committed to a future of personal and political friendship and when the Social Democrats swept to power in Germany's 1998 election, Mr Lafontaine was given the job of Finance Minister.
The ensuing power struggle lasted just six months. Mr Lafontaine is reputed to have been reduced to tears on realising the futility of his efforts to impose his brand of 70s left-wing economics and politics on a government that at the time was trying to copy Tony Blair's New Labour.
He was forced to resign as Finance Minister in March 1999. Mr Lafontaine and Mr Schröder have not spoken to each other since. Yet his view of those now running the SPD is as uncompromising as his desire to finish off Mr Schröder: "In terms of political content, they all left the SPD years ago," he insists.
Parting of the ways
* 1998: Gerhard Schröder is swept to power as the first Social Democrat Chancellor for 16 years on a promise to halve the country's growing number of unemployed. Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democrat party leader credited with bringing the party back to power, becomes Finance Minister.
* 1999: Lafontaine is forced to resign from all government and party posts after a row with Mr Schröder over policy.
* 2002: Mr Schröder's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens is narrowly returned to power after his government firmly opposes American plans to invade Iraq. Unemployment rises.
* 2005: Mr Schröder calls for a general election two years ahead of schedule following his party's disastrous defeat by opposition conservatives in the key state of North Rhine-Westphalia where his party loses power for the first time in nearly 40 years. German unemployment reaches 5 million, the highest level since the 1930s.
* June 2005: Mr Lafontaine declares he will challenge Mr Schröder as candidate for a new left-wing alliance of former communists and disaffected former Social Democrats.
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