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Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - Web posted at 10:27:16 GMT Schroeder appeals to Germany's industrial heartland GELSENKIRCHEN, Germany, Sept 18 (AFP) - Round a corner of Gelsenkirchen's cobbled market square, Schroeder the butcher is advertising its latest "cheap and fresh" special offers on steak and pork chops. |
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At the other end, Schroeder the chancellor is promoting his own message on a fairer jobs market, equality of opportunity, Iraq, workers' rights. He struggles at times to make himself heard above a small but shrill group of hecklers, armed with whistles. "That's no way for grown men to behave," he chides. It is five days before Germany votes in federal elections. Gelsenkirchen lies deep in the industrial heart of Europe's most powerful economy, where many strategists believe Sunday's election may well be won or lost. It is a traditional bastion of his Social Democrats, who have governed the encompassing state of North Rhine-Westphalia for nearly 36 years. With nearly 18 million people, the region is the most populous in Germany. The belt along the Ruhr river is Europe's largest industrial region. It generates a fifth of the country's exports. No wonder its premier likes to call it the world's 13th economic power. But all is not well in the region that in 1998 delivered a quarter of the SPD's total votes for the whole of Germany. Claudia Burkhard, 45 years and four failed businesses behind her, said she would turn her back on the SPD for the first time to vote for the opposition Christian Union behind Schroeder's conservative rival Edmund Stoiber. Schroeder had done nothing for people like her, she fumed. "He has really disappointed me. I've never been so unhappy with a government." Unemployment in Gelsenkirchen last month was 14.7 percent compared to the national average of 9.6 percent, up one percentage point from a year ago. A couple of financial scandals involving local SPD officials has tarnished the party's image. "I'm not completely satisfied with the last four years," said Jan Meiners, a local branch secretary of the powerful IG Metall union. "It's better than the Kohl government, but not as good as we'd hoped," he said, referring to the 16 years of conservative rule under Helmut Kohl which Schroeder ended in 1998. "The mood is, we definitely don't want Stoiber in, let alone his economics policies, so the only alternative is Schroeder." Which is hardly the ringing endorsement the chancellor needs here, because while the SPD is expected to win in North Rhine-Westphalia, it is the margin of victory that counts. Current polls put the party at 42 percent here compared to 35 percent for Stoiber's CDU/CSU alliance, better than last month's 40-37 percent gap. Yet Schroeder needs more, as the SPD has lost every federal vote in which it has failed to achieve at least 46 percent in North Rhine-Westphalia. So in 30 minutes on Gelsenkirchen's market square, the chancellor covered the themes that have served him well on the campaign trail: equality, rights, how Germany pulled together to overcome last month's floods crisis. On unemployment, "we wanted to do more than we were able to," he admitted, while at the same time vowing to "create a new order in the job market." On Iraq, he repeated to loud applause his refusal to join a US-led attack, saying the Middle East needed "a lot more peace and a lot less war." Friendship with the United States did not mean blindly doing everything it asked. "Anything else would be subjugation." "I liked him," said Julia, a 34-year-old single mother, as the 6,000 crowd streamed away afterwards. She had to quit her job as a sales assistant because the hours would not fit in with bringing up her son, 12. Now she can't find another job. "Of course I'll vote SPD. What else is there? "The SPD is the party of the working people. The CDU is for the employers. It's always been like that." km/tm Nampa-AFP WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 180227) |
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