In east Germany, economic woes feed voter apathy

On the surface, Bautzen is a pretty east German city with carefully restored red-roofed buildings and winding streets where tourists enjoy ice cream at outdoor cafés on a hill above the river Spree.

But look beyond this picture-postcard image and many of Bautzen's inhabitants are suffering the same disillusionment and despair that has made the east such a tough battleground for politicians seeking votes in Germany's election on Sunday.

Sitting outside Bautzen's labour office, Anja Hauke, 24, says she has been unemployed twice in recent years. She now works at a call centre but only until the end of the year.

"Things have become so bad, there's no chance anything will improve," she said. She had yet to decide how to vote.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD), the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Left Party, a new alliance including ex-communists, are locked in a three-way tie for votes in Germany's east.

What happens here could be key - the east is a pivotal region that tipped the balance in Germany's last four ballots.

But politicians will have to work hard for votes among people who feel they have been forgotten by the governing elite.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, unemployment in the east is twice as high as in the west, the population is shrinking and getting older and polls show voters have lost faith with Germany's main political parties.

Almost 60 per cent of east Germans think their interests are being ignored by Berlin's policymakers, a Forsa institute poll for Stern magazine showed earlier this month. Just under a third feel they are worse off now than they were under communism.

"If someone came along now like Hitler they would have a very, very good chance, although of course that's also not the right way forward," Ms Hauke said.

Bautzen, about half-way between Saxony capital Dresden and the Polish border, is home to around 42,000 people, down from 52,000 in 1988.

It is the cultural capital of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority group, and the site of a notorious East German secret police jail during communism.

Despite widespread disillusionment with politicians, the city did get some benefits under previous governments. Some of the €1.2 trillion poured into the east since reunification was spent on refurbishing its buildings.

And for some residents, life has got better. Denisa Galova, a smartly-dressed 30-year-old originally from Prague, says business is good at the new shopping centre she manages at the Kornmarkt in the centre of town.

"Despite everything you hear, I really think this region is doing well," Ms Galova said.

It's a different story across town, and away from the tourists, in the Gesundbrunnen, where dozens of tower blocks look out onto trucks thundering past on the main highway to Poland, some 50 km to the east.

Smoking a cigarette outside the supermarket where she works in the Gesundbrunnen - German for "fountain of health" - Mandy Kunze, 23, responds bitterly when asked for her assessment of Mr Schroeder's policies for the east.

"Do you really want to know? Crap." She has little faith in any of the other main parties either. "I really have no idea who to vote for. And in the end nothing will change anyway."

Although only about one in five German voters live in the east, it holds a disproportionately high number of swing voters.

Former conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl won in 1990 and 1994 with a promise of "blossoming landscapes", but eastern votes deserted him in 1998 and he lost to Mr Schroeder.

Mr Schroeder beat Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber in 2002 because the latter's weakness in the east negated his strength in the prosperous west.

Latest opinion polls suggest Mr Schroeder, who pledged to make eastern Germany a top priority, will fail to win a third straight term. His challenger, Angela Merkel of the CDU, is herself an easterner.

However, Mr Schroeder's chances may have been boosted last month after Mr Stoiber, whose Christian Social Union is allied to Merkel's CDU, infuriated millions of voters in the region by questioning the intelligence of eastern voters.

Mr Schroeder's SPD says its main aim is to lift living standards in the east towards western levels, including paying jobless benefit recipients the same as people get in the west. It also wants to set priorities for targeted investment.

The CDU wants to promote the creation of new companies and develop new markets for goods produced in the east, particularly in high technology. It also plans to cut red tape to encourage firms to move to the region.

That's certainly something that might appeal to first-time voter Janine Rachel, 18.

"I don't understand why firms can't be encouraged to invest here so that we have some jobs," said Ms Rachel, a grammar school pupil. "Something must be done to give the eastern states a boost."