14 September 2006
Neo-Nazis could win seats in regional elections in northeastern Germany on Sunday. According to opinion polls, the far-right party NPD could overcome the 5 per cent threshold that bars parties from having parliamentary representation in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. As many as 12 neo-Nazi seats are forecast by polls in what is the home state of German chancellor Angela Merkel. The vote on Sunday is for a new legislature that will elect a government which has control over areas such as police, education and health. The strength of the far-right highlights the continuing agony of east Germany over 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Unemployment remains at over 20 per cent in most places; over a million people have gone westwards.
The NPD is Germany's oldest neo-Nazi party and currently projected to win about around 6 per cent of the vote. It would mean that far-right parties will be represented in three of the six state parliaments in eastern Germany. The party' is openly xenophobic and anti-Semitic, and many of its leading members have expressed fondness for the Third Reich and dictator Adolf Hitler. An attempt by mainstream parties and the federal government of chancellor Gerhard Schröder to have the NPD banned and dissolved was thrown out by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2004 on procedural grounds.
In Berlin, where elections will also be held on Sunday, neo-Nazis have repeatedly attacked workers of other parties and disrupted political rallies. A member of the SPD's Young Socialist movement was assaulted and kick in the stomach when putting up campaign posters. He had to remain in hospital for serious injuries.
