Voters boost extreme parties in east Germany

EAST GERMANS gave a strong boost to right-wing extremists and the former communists in two state elections, punishing the country’s biggest mainstream parties for the region’s high unemployment and cuts in social programmes.

Yet the results gave the fringe parties no share of power in Saxony or Brandenburg, where Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats retained control.

“This is a good result. I think it’s grounds for optimism. We have to keep working hard, and we will,” Schroeder said yesterday.