WEST GERMANY'S GREENS WANT HIGHER PROFILE IN GOVERNMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605150002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 9, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605150002-6
,By ElisabetR Po.
Bonn
The West German Greens now seek an end to their
second-class status.
The environmental, countercultural party considers
itself the real victor in last month's election, in which it
shot up from its maiden 5.6 percent of the vote in 1983 to
its present 8.3 percent. And it wants the fruits of victory
in Bundestag posts commensurate with the party's elec-
toral strength.
This poses problems for all three established parties,
which managed to treat the Greens as an anomaly during
their first four years in Parliament and shut them out of
sensitive positions. What posts they will hold will have
to be thrashed out in the next two weeks before the new
Bundestag holds its constituent meeting Feb. 18 - but
this has been complicated by last week's one-vote win by
"Fundi" (fundamentalist) Thomas Ebermann over
"Realo" (realist) Otto Schily in the parliamentary caucus
election of the Greens' spokesman.
The Green Fundis favor pure resistance to the politi-
cal system, while the Realos favor impure influence
within it. Ebermann, a former member of one of the tiny
militant communist splinter parties, further approves
use of violence in this resistance and asserts that the
state should not have a "monopoly" on the use of force.
Politically Ebermann rejects West German membership
not only in NATO but also in the European Community,
which he characterizes as an evil instrument of the
ruling classes.
What the Greens are demanding is a Bundestag vice-
presidency and membership in the Intelligence Oversight
Committee, both of which they were denied in the last
legislature. Social Democratic parliamentary leader
Hans-Jochen Vogel is all for "full equal treatment" of the
Greens and supports their desire to name a vice-presi-
dent - but not at the cost of surrendering one of the two
Social Democratic vice-presidents. The conservatives,
who provide the president and one vice-president (the
conservatives' junior coalition partner, the liberal
Party, provides the fourth vice-president) reject the
Greens' bid outright.
The Greens argue that depriving them of a vice-
president would be rank discrimination, since they have
more seats in the incoming Bundestag than the Liberals
had in the outgoing one.
Certainly they have earned their spurs in the parlia-
mentary process over the past four years. They have
made highly effective use of the Bundestag podium and
of their right to interrogate the government on policy
West Germany's Greens want
higher profile in government
1111r\1J11/-WI JLICII IC I'IVIY1 IVK
issues. In their zeal for challenging old-boy networks and
habits, they have often done their detailed homework
far more assiduously than colleagues. Mr. Schily in par-
ticular, a crack lawyer who was in the last Bundestag for
a bit over half a term and has now been reelected, is a
master at committee cross-examination.
Clearly, however, they have not been
able to get their own legislation passed by
the Bundestag. But by scaring the estab-
lished parties with the Green voter ap-
peal and utilizing the parliamentary pul-
pit, they have put the environment
firmly on the agenda of every party and
prodded the center-right government
(after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in
the Soviet Union last year) to establish an
environment ministry.
The Greens have also aired any num-
des-
ber of aw issues. such as clan
tine arms exports, careless disposal of
toxic wastes plainclothes policemen's.
surveillance practices, intelligence-
en comp ilation of dossiers on Green
MFs, and overnment's failure to ex-
tend estates voluntary reparation
payments given to Jewish survivors of Adolf Hitler's
holocaust to my Hitler's other victims among Gypsies,
homosexuals, forced laborers, and those who were sub-
jected to compulsory sterilization.
record may suggest to the Social Democrats that
Tfus the Greens deserve to name one of the vice-presidents in
the Bundestag. But membership on the intelligence over-
c.
si ~ht com_m ttee is much more problemati
Wen cases of East German spies have surfaced in
recent years Green spokesmen have ridiculed the need
for classified information. The Fundis in the party are
refusing to sign any secrecy pledge, claiming that such a
pledge would be the first step to an unac-
ceptable "ideology test" for MPs. Individ-
ual "freedom of conscience" should pre-
vail, they contend, in deciding whether to
reveal any information that committee
members become privy to. Indeed, some
Greens want to do away with the intelli-
gence services altogether.
If the Greens are not allowed represen-
tation on the intelligence oversight cord-
ce
mittee - and on the postal surveillan
and wireta intelligence en budget,
judges selection, and elections commit-
tees, and the media supervisory board
- Schily intends to appeal this exclusion
to the Constitutional (supreme) Court.
the military and government bureaucra-
cies have no intention of letting secrets
get into Green hands and thus, they fear,
the press. Privately, officials say that if any Green gets
onto the intelligence committee, they will simply staunch
the ow of information to a committee. In this, they
would probably be successful, since Bundestag commit-
tees do not have the same powers to subpoena testimony
that United States congressional committees do.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605150002-6