German Left demands tax on rich, higher wages

Germany's Left party called for higher taxes on the rich and wage increases for the working class amid a steady erosion of support in polls for the East German Communists' successors ahead of September's election.

Oskar Lafontaine, former chairman of the Social Democrats and a leader of the new Left, said the group could still become the third strongest party in the September 18 election and already had forced other parties to bend their programmes to the left.

The newly formed alliance between the reform communist PDS, which is a force in the east, and left-wing defectors from Schroeder's SPD in the west have slipped in voter surveys from a peak of around 12 per cent two months ago to some eight per cent.

While the Left party poses an immediate threat to Schroeder's SPD-Greens coalition, it also may siphon enough votes from the centre-right alliance of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats despite expectations it will slip below eight per cent.

If neither side is able to claim a majority of parliamentary seats, the Left's rise could force the CDU and SPD into a "grand coalition" and leave the Left party as the largest opposition ahead of the Greens and FDP.

The PDS - a colourful mixture of die-hard Marxists, punks, unemployed and the so-called "losers of German unification" - is junior coalition partner in Berlin's city government as well as in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

But the PDS has struggled, failing to make in-roads into the populous west because of its links to the former East German Communists and falling below the five per cent threshold needed for parliament seats in 2002 after clearing that hurdle in 1998.