PDS heads East Berlin government

The article ``Five Years After the Fall of the Wall, Few East Berliners Celebrate,'' Nov. 2, states: ``The eastern state governments are dominated by the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former East German Communist Party....''

However, the PDS has a power role in the state government in only one of the five eastern German states, Saxony-Anhalt. There, the PDS tolerates a minority state government led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.

Although the PDS was electorally the strongest party in East Berlin in the Bundestag elections of Oct. 16, it won 19.8 percent of votes cast in the area of the former German Democratic Republic, making it the third-strongest party in eastern Germany rather than the dominant one. Gene Frankland, Muncie, Ind.

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