German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder vowed Monday to press on with his tough economic reform drive, despite a fresh state election rout that spells trouble for a string of polls later this month.
The Social Democrats (SPD) suffered their worst loss in 44 years in the tiny south-western state of Saarland Sunday, sinking to just 30.8 percent of the vote and allowing the Christian Democrats (CDU) to bolster their absolute majority.
"This is the comeuppance for the failure of Red-Green in Berlin," Saarland premier Peter Mueller told reporters Monday, referring to the party colours of the ruling SPD and the Greens.
Mueller, a CDU centrist, scored a spectacular 47.5 percent of the vote, while the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats made gains to squeak past the five-percent hurdle for representation in the state legislature.
He called his result "tailwind" for the CDU in two other state races this month in the eastern regions of Brandenburg and Saxony and local elections in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Schroeder criticised the SPD's candidate in Saarland, Heiko Maas, for distancing himself from the federal government in the campaign and said there was no other option but to forge ahead with the reforms.
"My only advice is to look forward," Schroeder said.
Voters are angry about cutbacks to the health care and pension systems and plans to slash benefits to the long-term jobless, and frustrated that Schroeder's bitter pills have not produced a robust economic recovery.
Germans were set to take to the streets again Monday evening, primarily in the depressed ex-communist east of the country, continuing a series of giant weekly protests against the reforms.
"The seventh election defeat for the SPD in a row - things will get a little more uncomfortable for Schroeder," Germany's top-selling newspaper, Bild, wrote in an editorial referring to a series of local, state and European election disasters for the SPD. "The street protests against welfare reforms have reached the ballot box."
Although Schroeder has come under intense pressure to roll back the measures, SPD general secretary Klaus-Uwe Benneter pledged the government would hold fast.
"What we need to do is implement what we started," Benneter told ARD public television.
"We can't keep confusing people. What we plan to implement is the right thing to get the upper hand on unemployment."
Schroeder's party, however, has little time to allow the reforms to bear fruit.
Although the next national election is not scheduled until September 2006, voters in each of the three elections this month are expected to abandon the SPD in droves. The former communist Party of Democratic Socialism, successor of the party that built the Berlin Wall, is profiting from disenchantment in the east and expected to take second place in Saxony and the top spot in Brandenburg.
ANTI-REFORM PROTESTS RAGE ON IN GERMANY: Thousands of Germans turned up the pressure on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Monday with fresh demonstrations across the country against his economic reforms.
Nearly 220 protests were scheduled for the evening, most of them in the depressed former communist east. They marked the fifth in a series of weekly rallies against Schroeder's plans to slash benefits to the long-term jobless.
The protests came just one day after Schroeder's Social Democrats suffered a bitter loss in a state election in Saarland, western Germany, at the start of a month-long marathon of polls.
The latest marches, organised by a loose coalition including the anti-globalisation group Attac, trade unions and other activists, show little sign of abating as Schroeder vows to press ahead with his reform drive.
The largest rallies were set to hit Berlin and the eastern city of Leipzig, after 70,000 people demonstrated in cities throughout the country one week ago.
By the early evening some 15,000 people had turned out in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia alone, which is to hold local elections later this month. The turn-out marked a sharp increase from the 8,600 who marched last week.
The government's unpopular social and economic reforms are known collectively as Agenda 2010 and many are due to come into force on January 1.
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