FRANKFURT - The German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohls Christian Democrats (CDU) scored solid gains in local elections in the wealthy state of Hesse yesterday even though national surveys show growing impatience with his government.
Computer projections showed the CDU gaining 1.3 points in Hesse to 33.3 per cent and in the country's financial capital of Frankurt, long a bastion of the Social Democrats, Dr Kohl's party posted a strong gain of 4.2 points to 37.6 per cent.
The vote in Hesse, one of Germany's wealthiest states with 4.5 million is one of only two elections this year. Hamburg voters cast ballots in September.
The Social Democrats (SPD), the main opposition party in Bonn, also posted modest gains, gaining 1.8 per cent to 38.2 per cent. The main losers were the smaller parties. The Greens slipped 0.7 points to 10.2 per cent, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) dropped to 4.0 per cent from 5.1 per cent in 1993 and the far right Republicans declined to 5.6 per cent from 8.3 per cent.
The Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor, Mr Ignatz Bubis, was feted as the real winner of the Frankfurt elections after helping his liberal FDP enter the city parliament for the first time in 16 years.
Meanwhile, a national opinion poll published by the Emnid research institute yesterday found that Kohl's centre right coalition could no longer prevent a leftist majority made up of SPD and Greens.