Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003182359
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press
DATELINE: EAST LENGTH: Medium
At stake is nothing less than the pace and form of German unification, an event that will transform the balance of power in Europe.
"It is the start of a new destiny," commented a ranking Western diplomat here. "It is the final public demise of the old system."
The election also marks the dawn of unfettered democracy for the more than 100 million citizens of the Soviet Union's former satellite empire of Eastern Europe.
Hungary will hold its first free national election in 40 years next Sunday, while polls in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania are scheduled to follow later in the year.
"The [East German] voters are not only deciding about their own destiny, but also about the soundness of the European home, in which we all want to live in equality and without fear of one another," said West German President Richard von Weizsaecker.
The 400-member parliament that East Germans elect will form a government with the curious mandate of dissolving itself into a unified greater Germany.
In the process, however, it must negotiate a myriad of key unification-linked issues, including a currency union with West Germany.
The vote follows a campaign dominated by a single issue: how the two Germanys should unify.
The overwhelming role of West German political parties and personalities in the debate indicated that, at one level, unification was already a fact.
On election eve, a moderately right-wing three-party coalition backed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's West German Christian Democrats contends as a front-runner with a revived Social Democratic Party, supported with equal zeal by its West German counterpart.
Few analysts expect either group to win a clear majority, and the prospect of a broad coalition is considered a likely result.
The discredited Communists have managed a revival of sorts. By changing their name to Democratic Socialists and running a quip-a-minute campaign built around their clever, fast-talking party leader, Gregor Gysi, the Communists could obtain as much as 15 percent of the vote, some observers believe.
Seven East German political parties claimed Saturday that former agents in the supposedly disbanded secret police planned to use false identity cards, each with a different name, to vote several times to prop up Communist candidates.
"There is the suspicion of well prepared vote-rigging planned for March 18," the parties said in a statement.
The Communist-led government claims the secret police force has been virtually disbanded, but many East Germans have doubts.
The secret police force, which officials say once numbered nearly 200,000 agents and informers, was the hard-line Communists' main instrument of control. Most former agents reportedly remain loyal to the Communists.
An election commission representing all political parties has said vote-rigging is impossible.
Also on election eve, a West Berlin newspaper reported that East Germany's caretaker government has demanded an immediate financial bailout from Bonn to prevent economic collapse.
"East Germany urgently needs 5 billion marks [$2.94 billion] to provide for the population and prevent economic collapse," the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper said.
West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said the prosperous West Germans must contribute to building up the East German economy, just as the United States aided West Germany and Europe in the immediate post-war years with the Marshall Plan.
by CNB