Munich
Bavaria’s regional prime minister, Edmund Stoiber, hurt his conservative party’s chances in next month’s elections by offending much of the German populace this week. Stoiber complained that Germany’s future should not be determined by “frustrated people” from the former East Germany who want a nanny government to solve all their problems. “Unfortunately,” he said, “our citizens are not as intelligent everywhere as they are in Bavaria.” Stoiber’s Christian Social Union is a key ally of the Christian Democratic Union, the party favored to unseat the ruling Social Democrats. Many German newspapers predicted that Stoiber’s comments would alienate eastern Germans even more from the two conservative parties.
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