BONN – Gerhard Schroeder won the Fate elections, with his SPD Germany leading the European left. In yesterday’s parliamentary elections, the Germans retired, after 16 years, the father of national unity, of the agreement with Paris and of the single European currency, Helmut Kohl, inflicting on him and his Christian bloc, the Cdu-Csu, a defeat humiliating and superior to any prediction, which leads to historical lows and is accompanied by a local vote in the East: the Christian Democrats already in the minority in the House of Regions lose another Land, Mecklenburg-Prepomerania.

It is not a victory from head to head, but an earthquake. Between the popular party’s enthusiasm at the winners’ headquarters, with beer and frankfurters for everyone, and the sadness at Palazzo Adenauer – two buildings two and a half hundred meters away on Bundesstrasse 9 that cuts Bonn – yesterday the air of a historical turning point. Exciting and at the same time sad even for the small city on the Rhine, which yesterday was the last theater of the political clash: it will be up to Chancellor Schroeder and his government, in the next summer, to move executive, Bundestag, ministries and embassies in Berlin.
“We did it, the era Kohl is over: the New Center has won, has found itself united behind the SPD”, shouted radiant Schroeder, presented at 19, with the petite, smiling wife Doris clinging to his arm, to thousands of supporters in jubilation and journalists from all over the world on the improvised stage in the Erich-Ollenhauer-Haus, the Social Democratic leadership. The data prove him right: the SPD makes a jump in the consensus, rising by 4.6 percent to 41 percent. The Cdu-Csu collapses to 35, losing as much as 6.5 percent of the votes. They lose little (both 0.6) the two minor parties, the liberals (FDP) allies of Kohl who are 6.3 per cent, and the Greens potential partners of Schroeder which stand at 6.7. Solid success of the Eastern post-communists, the PDS, which rises to 5.1 and dispenses four terms directly to Berlin, while the ultra-right is a fiasco.

Translated into seats, the result of yesterday means that on paper the majority Spd-Greens is already there: with 286 Social Democratic deputies and 47 ecologists, the block of the Democratic Left had in the projections of the two public TV channels of last night at 22 already the numbers to govern: 333 seats, four more than the 329 who make the absolute majority.
Shouts and jubilation slogans from the people on the left also came a few meters further south on Bundesstrasse 9, on the first floor of the Adenauer building, where the splendid buffet tables remained intact. Visibly shaken, restraining the emotion with dignity, Kohl in turn spoke to the followers with long faces and to the country: “We have lost, we do not discuss, and it is certainly not the fault of the party, which has engaged in the campaign with all energy. I take every responsibility for the defeat, and at the congress I will also leave the presidency of the CDU.To the winner I wish success, and that he has a happy and fortunate hand in governing Germany “.

The Machtwechsel, the alternation in power, was thus accomplished in a cold but sunny autumn Sunday, after 16 long years when Brandt and Schmidt’s Orphan Spd almost no longer believed in returning to the first party. The slap of the voters – particularly brutal to the east, where the CDU has fallen below 1990 levels – has exceeded all expectations, even the forecasts of the leaders of the left. And leaning to follow the house for the last time a political election, last night, little Bonn remained suspended in great uncertainty, wondering to what extent the “arrival of the new generations”, exalted by Schroeder with enthusiasm sessantottina, will be good or bad for the country and for Europe.