Social Democrats

TOKYO -- Japan's 4-year-old governing coalition fractured yesterday, as the Social Democratic Party formally announced that it would quit and strike out on its own.It is a measure of how far the Social Democrats have fallen in popularity that their departure will scarcely matter. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics since the 1950s, will continue to govern Japan, with no need for new elections or a Cabinet reshuffle.The collapse of the coalition had been expected and was not expected to cause any particular instability.

Most Americans, if they think about Germany at all this time of year, focus on Munich's Oktoberfest, with its oompah bands, barmaids toting hefty beer mugs, and traditional costumes. But these caricatures ignore important changes resulting from Sunday's national elections, which ended the so-called Grand Coalition between Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, a large party on the right, and the Social Democrats, a large party on the left. In a year when capitalists and bankers are widely reviled, German voters did something strange; they dumped the pro-worker, pro-low-unemployment Social Democrats and chose the centrist, pro-business Free Democrats as Ms. Merkel's coalition partner.

BERLIN - The governing Social Democrats won a comfortable victory yesterday in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, confirming both the resurgence of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the plight of the opposition Christian Democrats. Reliable projections from German television gave the Social Democrats 43.5 percent of the vote and the Christian Democrats 37 percent. Before a major financial scandal engulfed the Christian Democrats six months ago, the party appeared poised to win the state, which has been governed by the Social Democrats for 34 years.

LONDON -- "It's a distressing outcome, the worst possible."In the confusion from Germany's closest parliamentary election in history, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder claimed victory again yesterday over his opponent, Angela Merkel - who again claimed victory herself. Whatever the ultimate outcome, one thing seems clear: With leadership changes imminent in Europe's most powerful countries - in France, Britain and possibly Italy - Germany's chance to reform itself and rebound to play a stronger role in Europe has been lost for now. The importance of Sunday's vote goes beyond Germany's borders, as reflected already by the wobbling euro, which yesterday hit a seven-week low against the dollar, a drop that has serious implications for countries throughout Europe.

BONN, Germany -- In a country with a love of fast cars and the open road, they campaigned for a highway speed limit and stiff new gasoline taxes. In a bedrock NATO nation, they called for dissolving national armies and military alliances.And now, the Greens, environmentalists and pacifists who have campaigned for decades on the streets, are poised to enter the halls of power as a junior partner in the new German government.Chancellor-in-waiting Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democratic Party opened the mating ritual for a new governing partner yesterday, and signaled they were prepared to open talks Friday to forge a ruling coalition with the Greens.

BERLIN -- Voters in two German states handed a sharp rebuff to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday, ousting his long-dominant Social Democratic Party in the western Saarland and ushering a far-right party into the state Parliament for the first time in Brandenburg.The results were a major setback for the chancellor, who has been unable to exploit the wave of enthusiasm that brought him to office a year ago. He has seen his support dwindle steadily as unemployment in Europe's largest economy has remained high, with discontent widespread.

RARE IS the election in which both major parties take comfort in the results, but that is the case in Germany after the Hamburg state elections last month.Party leaders see the portents of victory in next year's national elections: the conservative Christian Democrats gained ground; their main opposition, the leftist Social Democrats, made their worst post-war showing.But to control Germany's parliament, both parties will likely need a majority coalition with a small party, just as the ruling Christian Democrats now have with the Free Democrats.

Stockholm -- Sweden's governing Social Democrats face a serious challenge in the general election which comes in the fall, a result of the fact that the Swedish model of society -- the famous ''third way'' between communism and capitalism -- no longer commands the electoral majorities it did and no longer produces the economic success of the past.The Social Democrats are in an intellectual as well as political crisis. They have no substitute or successor to the Swedish model of the welfare state they created in the 1920s and 1930s, to international acclaim.

BONN, Germany -- Germany moved early today to choke off the growing influx of foreigners from the world's poorer countries as the main opposition Social Democrats voted to restrict the country's virtual open-door policy to those claiming political asylum.The decision came shortly after midnight on the opening day of a special party conference. It followed a sharp, often emotional debate that unfolded against the backdrop of xenophobic, right-wing extremist violence in Germany. Much of that violence has been directed at asylum-seekers flooding into the country from poorer European and Third World nations.

BERLIN -- Chancellor Helmut Kohl's party suffered a double defeat yesterday, when it lost a state government election and control of the upper house of parliament.The loss was also a personal blow for Mr. Kohl because it came in his home state, Rhineland-Palatinate (or Rhineland-Pfalz), which had been governed by his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for more than 40 years.In the face of rising national problems, the CDU garnered only 39 percent of the vote, a drop of more than 5 percentage points from the last election results in 1986.

FROM THE forest at the edge, the little yellow truck traveled down, deeper and deeper, into the pit. It passed below the serrated gray-black edges of the seam and drove and bumped deeper still, until it was at the bottom - more than 1,000 feet down - of the open-face Tagebau Hambach coal mine, an immense monument to German energy. Here there was a towering excavator, one of six. From behind his handlebar mustache, Andreas von der Linden, a member of the mine's works council, reeled off the statistics: each machine more than 100 feet high, resting on eight mammoth tractor treads, weighing 13,000 tons, requiring 40 tons of paint, designed for a crew of five, able to dig out 240,000 tons of lignite coal a day. A soft breeze flowed, even at the dusty, barren bottom, carrying the faint smell of coal.

BRANDENBURG, Germany - The stone goddesses are flaking on Big Garden Street. The steel mill started its slide years ago. The textile plant has fared no better. Steeples glimmer above the rooftops, but the hopeful flicker doesn't obscure what Otto Mahler sees as one long betrayal. "When East and West Germany reunified after communism, they promised us the world," said Mahler, a retired steel worker whose factory has shrunk from 10,000 jobs to 750 over the past decade. "They said we'd all have an equal standard of living.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The headquarters of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia could use a good scrubbing. It's on Political Prisoners Street - an irony no doubt appreciated in a country that selected an absurdist playwright (and sometime political prisoner) as its first post-communist president - and the building's imposing neoclassical facade bristles with columns and arches and statuary, all caked in soot. The soot would seem an apt image for a party seemingly consigned, along with its peers across Central and Eastern Europe, to the "ash heap of history," in Ronald Reagan's famous phrase.

Philippines officials give in to demand of Muslim extremists MANILA - Muslim rebels in the Philippines who had threatened to execute three U.S. hostages said today that they had postponed their plan because the government was willing to give in to their demand for a Malaysian negotiator. But local officials said gunmen suspected of being members of the same rebel group had taken some 50 children hostage from a town in the southern island of Basilan. The Abu Sayyaf rebels, based in Basilan, had threatened to kill the U.S. hostages at midnight EDT if Sairin Karno, a former Malaysian senator, was not allowed to negotiate with them.

BERLIN - The governing Social Democrats won a comfortable victory yesterday in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, confirming both the resurgence of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the plight of the opposition Christian Democrats. Reliable projections from German television gave the Social Democrats 43.5 percent of the vote and the Christian Democrats 37 percent. Before a major financial scandal engulfed the Christian Democrats six months ago, the party appeared poised to win the state, which has been governed by the Social Democrats for 34 years.

KIEL, Germany -- Germany's Christian Democratic Union, punished for the financial scandal that has engulfed the party and its former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, crashed to a heavy defeat yesterday by the governing Social Democrats in an election in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. The result amounted to the first concrete confirmation of the Christian Democrats' electoral plight since the financial scandal broke late last year. Three months ago, opinion polls showed Volker Ruehe, Kohl's last defense minister and the party's candidate for premier in Schleswig-Holstein, with a seemingly unassailable 10 percentage-point lead over the Social Democrats.

BERLIN -- The opposition Social Democratic Party failed yesterday in an attempt to condemn the German government's widening use of military forces in world affairs.As expected, the majority coalition in the Parliament passed a resolution approving the dispatch of an air-navy patrol to the Adriatic Sea to help monitor a United Nations embargo against Yugoslavia.With reminders of Germany's past militarism threading their speeches, legislators debated for five hours the proper role of the country's armed forces in the post-Cold-War world.

BERLIN -- A pipe-smoking Beau Brummell and a sober farmer are expected to win today's two German state elections, but the size of their victory is being closely watched as a barometer of national politics and the European trend toward right-wing parties.In northern Schleswig-Holstein, well-dressed Bjorn Engholm is poised to retain the state premiership, but if his Social Democrats do not keep their majority in the legislature, then his other position, as the party's national leader and challenger to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, will be seriously damaged.

PARIS -- The European Union's reaction to the Haider affair in Austria expresses fine sentiments about democracy but offends the fundamental democratic principle that the popular will, expressed in an election, deserves respect. Great pressure was placed on Austria to block the government coalition, announced last Thursday, between Joerg Haider's right-wing Austrian Freedom Party and the mainstream conservative People's Party. This was the only governing coalition on offer, since the People's Party and the Social Democrats failed to agree to form a government.

BERLIN -- Voters in two German states handed a sharp rebuff to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday, ousting his long-dominant Social Democratic Party in the western Saarland and ushering a far-right party into the state Parliament for the first time in Brandenburg.The results were a major setback for the chancellor, who has been unable to exploit the wave of enthusiasm that brought him to office a year ago. He has seen his support dwindle steadily as unemployment in Europe's largest economy has remained high, with discontent widespread.