Kohl was asked to clarify who the party's contributors are and how the money had been handled. Although he has admitted receiving about $1 million paid into secret accounts, Kohl refused to name his financial backers.

For close to 50 years Kohl has been a leader of CDU and for 16 of them he was the head of a coalition government in Germany. Although self-proclaimed as the "father" of German reunification, his recent difficulties give a more accurate assessment of the problems facing the German ruling class.

Kohl was defeated by the Social Democratic Party in the 1998 elections as a large-scale crisis coming out of the rising class tensions in the country underpinned a leftward shift in capitalist politics in Germany. A similar pattern emerged in other European countries and North America.

The scandal also involves Kohl's successor as leader of the CDU, Wolfgang Schäuble, who has been implicated for receiving large bribes from weapons dealer Karlheinz Schreiber. Schreiber says he has given money to politicians in Germany as bribes to approve a sale of armored vehicles from a German firm to Saudi Arabia and jet fighters to Canada. Other such arrangements have come to light.

Schäuble apologized in the Bundestag January 20 for having led astray both the German people and parliament and thus hurt confidence in the "democratic parties and institutions." The same day it had become public that Wolgang Hüllen, the CDU politician who has had responsibility for the joint finances in the Bundestag of the CDU and its sister party, the Bavaria-based CSU (Christian Social Union), had committed suicide. He had left a letter stating personal reasons, but his suicide has been connected with the financial scandal.

The events have given some strength to right-wing parties, and rightist currents in the CDU. Republican party leader Rolf Schlierer said on January 21 that the scandal has led disappointed conservatives to look for other parties on the right. "It is unbelievable how fast interest in the Republicans is growing," he told the press.

In a January 29 article published by the Financial Times, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder argues that Germany's political system, and the public faith in it, have not been harmed by the CDU scandal. Although the scandal has increased the support for the Social Democratic Party, who had earlier been heavily defeated by CDU in state elections last year, the scandal still worries Schroeder.

The article was titled, "In democracy we trust," and Schroeder is clearly unhappy over the extent of the shakeup of bourgeois politics in Germany.

But the scandal has been occupying the German and, increasingly, the European public for weeks, growing to the biggest scandal in post World War II Germany.

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metalworkers union in Södertälje, Sweden.  
 
 
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