Schroeder's victory
After weeks of election campaigning by veteran leader Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and challenger Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the majority of the German people on Sunday chose Schroeder, 54, as the man they wanted to entrust with maintaining Germany's predominant role in Europe beyond the year 2000.
Preliminary results from Sunday's ballot released on Monday showed that Schroeder had defeated Kohl in what political analysts believe was the country's closest general election since World War II.
Kohl has ruled the country for the past 16 years, making him the longest serving chancellor in modern Germany.
Of the 60.5 million eligible voters, 40.9 percent voted for Schroeder against 35.2 percent for Kohl. The remaining 23.9 percent were divided between smaller parties like the environmentalist Greens, the liberal Free Democrats and the reformed communist PDS.
Although Schroeder's victory came as no surprise -- he had held a slim but steady lead in numerous opinion polls conducted in the weeks before voting -- the result is nevertheless significant in that Schroeder has ousted the sitting chancellor credited with reuniting a divided Germany in 1990 and securing the German economy as the engine of the European Community.
"The result of this election is a bitter defeat for us. But as good democrats, we will respect the people's decision," thus stated CDU party secretary Peter Hintze as quoted by CNN.
Kohl's defeat, many believe, was partly caused by his policy of cutting unemployment benefit and other social welfare allowances. The policy, introduced in 1996, was designed to lower the country's budget deficit and to lessen the burden of the annual transfer of 150 billion marks ($89.2 billion) to the former East Germany. He also failed to bring greater prosperity to the country's 82 million population, more than four millions of whom are still jobless.
Schroeder, on the other hand, insisted during his campaign that the state-run welfare program must not be cut and that, when elected, he would not introduce new taxes. His victory also appeared to have been partly spurred on by the wind of change that has swept the world following the emergence of a younger generation of leaders who are expected to give fresh impetus to global development.
Schroeder's new government, according to two German political scientists currently on a visit to Jakarta, will focus more on domestic issues than on international ones. They said that the hard task Schroeder must immediately undertake is to solve the structural problems of unemployment in Germany -- Europe's most populous nation which produces one-tenth of world's exports and consumes one-twelfth of global imports -- while creating a more harmonious atmosphere between capital and labor as well as a better environment.
Both analysts, Reimund Seidelmann and Philipp Borinski of the University of Gieen, agreed that there will be no great changes in Germany's foreign policy under the new chancellor, who had pledged during his campaign that he would continue with his predecessor's foreign policy, despite different priorities on his agenda.
Given all this, it can be expected that Kohl's 10-point "Concept on Asia" which aims at forging closer ties in all spheres with Asian countries, particularly with the nine member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Indonesia, will remain as valid as before.
Economic cooperation between countries is based on mutual interest and not on the political creeds of their leaders.