By Chow Wei-Cheng
Germany has been plunged into political instability by the outcome of the general elections held on October 16. The 60 million voters gave Kohl's party its worst election result (41.5%) since 1949.
The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and its ally the Free Democratic Party returned with a wafer-thin majority of 10.
In the previous Bundestag, the ruling coalition held a majority of 134 seats. The new balance will mean Kohl's government can not pass legislation easily and will have to rely heavily on its alliance with the FDP. The opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) controls 60% of votes in the Bundesrat, the upper chamber which represents Germany's 16 states.
The most significant change in the new parliament is attributable to the success of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The Greens also bounced back to 7% having dropped below 5% in 1990.
The real losers after the CDU/CSU were the FDP, who lost more than 4 percentage points and 32 seats compared to 1990, and the far right Republicans, who failed to make even 2%.
The PDS won four directly elected seats in east Berlin to gain 30 seats in the Bundestag, receiving 4.4% nationally compared to 2.4% in 1990.
The PDS is widely recognised as the "voice of the East". Across eastern Germany the party has doubled its vote since the last general election. "It is a truly historic achievement. We withstood an unholy alliance of all the other parties and the media against us", said Gregor Gysi, the PDS parliamentary leader in Bonn. In the campaign, Kohl called the PDS "red painted fascists".
Stefan Heym, a leading novelist, won the central Prenzlauer Berg constituency for the PDS. Christa Luft, economics minister in the last Communist government in East Germany, was elected for the PDS in East Berlin. She said she would lobby hard for East German interests.
While 90% of PDS members are former Communists, the independent polling organisation Infas found that more than 20% of PDS voters are under 25 and more than 30% of its voters are unemployed.
The PDS won 20% of the vote in east Germany and 0.9% in the west, mainly in Berlin.
On the same day state elections were held in Saarland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Thuringia. In Mecklenburg where both the FDP and Greens failed the 5% hurdle to enter the state assembly, the PDS won 23% of the vote, up from a previous 15%, compared to 38.9% for CDU and 27.8% for SPD.
In the staunchly conservative Thuringia, the PDS improved its result from 9.7% to 17.5%, against 43.2 for CDU and 28.9 for SPD.
Starting to grow at 2.5% and with inflation expected at 2% by next year, the German economy is still plagued by many structural problems. Long-term unemployment stands at almost 1 million and state debt at 7.5% of GDP. The financial markets have been wary of investing in German securities due to the uncertainty surrounding the election and are likely to remain uneasy given the outcome, despite this year's doubling of corporate profits and an expected surge in profits next year.
Kohl's coalition will need to take into account the feelings of east Germans and maintain large-scale financial help which runs counter to free market policies. The coalition will find it much harder to push through its plans to tighten social security, increase "flexibility" for part time work, cut company tax and privatise and deregulate.