The Left | Elif Eralp in Berlin: Like Gysi, but different

Left-wing leading candidate Elif Eralp attaches one of her election posters herself. Photo: dpa/Christoph Soeder In the forecasts for the Berlin House of Representatives election next Sunday, the Left, CDU, AfD and Greens are close together. Some survey results indicate a neck-and-neck race between the CDU and the Left, others see the Socialists ahead with up to 23 percent of the vote. There is a realistic chance that Left Party top candidate Elif Eralp will become mayor.

Previously, since the reunification of the city, which was divided by a wall until 1989, her party could only dream of providing the governing mayor once. That was in 2001, when the CDU lost 17 percentage points as a result of a banking scandal and the PDS tailored its election campaign entirely to its driving force, Gregor Gysi. The PDS created a state list instead of district lists. Because Gysi's name should be on the ballot papers everywhere in the city. Eralp was 20 years old at the time and was just starting her law studies in Hamburg. She has only lived in Berlin since 2011 and is now only running for office in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district.

The PDS surprised people in 2001 with election posters that simply said “Cool!” or “Awesome!” There was a Gysi election headquarters on Karl-Marx-Allee, at the opening of which a cabaret artist warned the top candidate Gysi, in the tone of SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht, to take the "class point of view" into account. In order to cooperate with the government, the PDS was supposed to apologize for building the wall. But the fear reflexes trained into West Berliners during the Cold War no longer worked. Gysi was also cheered on during his appearances there, and his party was suddenly elected there too. Today it is no longer possible to tell from the Left's election results where East Berlin was and where West Berlin was.

In 2001, the unemployment rate in Berlin was 16.1 percent, 1.3 percentage points lower than in Brandenburg. The relationship has now been reversed. In the capital the rate is currently 10.6 percent, in Brandenburg it is only 6.5 percent. There has been a housing shortage in Berlin for years. At that time, however, apartments were empty and entire blocks were demolished without replacement. An apartment that could then be rented for around 500 euros a month now costs upwards of 1,500 euros without having been modernized in the meantime.

At the polls in October 2001, the PDS achieved 22.6 percent, its still unsurpassed record result in a House of Representatives election. But that was only enough for third place behind the SPD and CDU and for the role of junior partner in a red-red coalition. Gysi did not become the governing mayor, but rather an economics senator. He stayed there for just five months. Then Gysi resigned in the wake of the bonus mile affair. He and Bundestag member Cem Özdemir (Greens) had used frequent flyer discounts acquired on the job for private purposes. Gysi was no longer responsible when the red-red Senate privatized almost 66,000 municipal apartments in 2004. It would now be up to Elif Eralp to correct this serious mistake and socialize large housing stocks.

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