Berlin voters likely to give little support to Schroder's SPD

After a week of bruising criticism from his former finance minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, faces a fresh battering at the polls when Berlin votes in a state election tomorrow.

His Social Democrats (SPD) are braced for a sharp drop in support as disgruntled voters in the east of the city turn to the former communists in the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).

Many SPD activists blame their poor prospects on their choice of Mr Walter Momper, who was mayor of the city when the Berlin Wall came down ten years ago, as their candidate this time around.

Mr Momper, who has not held public office for the past eight years, spent much of his campaign criticising Berlin's present government - a coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats (CDU).

As Mr Momper's popularity plummeted following a scandal over irregularities in the employment conditions of his household help, the SPD began to distance itself from its candidate. But it was unable to rescue a campaign strategy that allowed the CDU to claim the credit for the state government's achievements.

In fact, the coalition has much to boast about, as any visitor to Germany's new capital can testify. Not only did the city attract the investment needed for Europe's biggest construction project for centuries, it did so as generous subsidies from the federal government were abruptly halted.

The woman with most to brag about is Berlin's finance minister, Ms Annette Fugmann-Heesing, a Social Democrat who instituted an ambitious budget consolidation plan, selling off municipal assets and cutting costs in every department. The CDU has attempted to blame Ms Fugmann-Heesing for every unpopular decision the coalition has taken but Berliners like straight talking - and they like their finance minister.

When the votes are counted tomorrow evening, the coalition is likely to return to power under Berlin's Christian Democrat mayor, Mr Eberhard Diepgen. The 58-year-old lawyer, who succeeded the former president, Mr Richard von Weizsacker, as mayor in 1983, has been in the job ever since, apart from the two years of Mr Momper's incumbency.

Uncharismatic, uninspiring and relentlessly middle-of-the-road, Mr Diepgen has become a welcome symbol of continuity to many Berliners as they attempt to keep up with the pace of change in the capital.

Most of Mr Diepgen's support comes from the west of the city, where well-heeled Berliners still prefer to live. In the east, the PDS reigns supreme and it expects to capture more than 80 per cent of the vote in some districts tomorrow. With the Greens likely to poll respectably above 10 per cent, the only question surrounds the severity of the Social Democrats' losses in the political heart of the new Germany.