Neo-Nazis set to win seats in deprived eastern Germany

NEO-NAZIS are set to gain important seats in the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's home state on Sunday, in an election which will show that the spectre of a dark past continues to haunt the country.

As many as 12 neo-Nazi MPs are forecast to be elected to the parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They will join others elected two years ago as legislators in Saxony, another eastern Land, or state.

Despite attacks against black people in the run-up to the summer World Cup - in itself themed against racism - and warnings of no-go zones in the former communist east because of right-wing violence, the lure of the politics of the extreme remains strong in the region.

The vote on Sunday is for a new legislature that will control vital areas such as police, education and health.

A bloc of far right, National Democratic Party (NPD) politicians will prove embarrassing, controversial and even influential in policymaking in the region.

The strength of the far right highlights the continuing agony of east Germany over 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Unemployment remains at over 20 per cent in most places; over a million people have gone westwards.

East Germany bleeds around 80 people a day, lost forever to look for work in the West or out of Germany altogether. Since reunification, 1.4 million of its best and brightest and youngest have left.

In Meck-Pomm, as locals call it, that has left behind the hardened skinheads and others who have turned to the dubious glories of the Nazi period.

The NPD is Germany's oldest neo-Nazi party and is set to win about 6 per cent of the vote on 17 September. It means that far right parties will be represented in three of the six Lnder parliaments in eastern Germany. The party's xenophobia, anti-semitism and fondness for the Third Reich are increasingly couched behind populist rants against globalisation and Turkish EU membership.

The slogans on its posters in the Meck-Pomm town of Strasburg could be those of any party. Only the headlines on the front page of the party newspaper - "Send Israel's Olmert to The Hague" - hint at the NPD's more chilling views.

The NPD's prospects in the state look particularly good because, for the first time since 1990, the election there will not take place at the same time as the German federal vote. That should push down turnout rates and benefit the party.

The NPD may also profit from widespread dissatisfaction with the "grand coalition" led by the chancellor, Angela Merkel, which may undermine support for the conservatives and social democrats who make up her ruling coalition.

The outcome of the election is not really in doubt - it will probably end up still being ruled by the social democratic SPD and the hard-left PDS.

"But the PDS is part of the local government, so protest votes are likely to go to the NPD," said Toralf Staud, the author of a book on the NPD called Modern Nazis.

What authorities fear is that wide swathes of eastern Germany - which is made up of blighted small towns like Strasburg - will become hotbeds of the far right where fascist views flourish.