WEST GERMANY: CHANCELLOR WILLY BRANDT VOTES IN ELECTION THAT HAS SWEPT HIS LEFT-LIBERAL GOVERNMENT BACK INTO POWER.

Record ID: 328622

  • Title: WEST GERMANY: CHANCELLOR WILLY BRANDT VOTES IN ELECTION THAT HAS SWEPT HIS LEFT-LIBERAL GOVERNMENT BACK INTO POWER.
  • Date: 19th November 1972
  • Summary: 1. GV River & city of Bonn 0.05 2. GV Street scene 0.08 3. SV Bundestag 0.14 4. SV Election posters (4 shots) 0.19 5. SV Gate in front of Chancellor's Office closes 0.29 6. SV INT. Mrs. Luebke votes 0.32 7. SV Polling officials 0.34 8. SV Mrs. Brandt puts vote into ballot box 0.43 9. SV Brandt votes 0.53 10. SV Brandt leaving polling station 0.56 Initials SGM/2340 SGM/0015 Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 4th December 1972 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bonn, West Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Reuters ID: LVA5Z9B4PO2C5AII7835KRZ13PC5
  • Story Text: West Germans streamed to voting stations on sunday (19 November) and swept Chancellor Willy Brandt's left-liberal coalition government back to power with a comfortably increased majority. His Christian Democratic (CDU) opponent, Dr. Rainer Barzel, conceded defeat a little over two hours after polling ended.

    The election victory for Chancellor Brandt is seen as a popular vote of confidence in him personally and an endorsement of his "Ostpolitik" policy of cultivating better relations with the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe.

    The 58-year-old Social Democrat's government came to grief in Parliament because of defections over the Ostpolitik after only three years in office. He vowed that he would go to the country and obtain the vote of confidence denied to him in Parliament.

    Now that he has own, the way is clear to implement the series of major treaties he has signed with Eastern Europe. These treaties started with the historic Moscow Pact of 1970 and culminated in the treaty initiated on 8 November, with East Germany, that acknowledges the existence of two separate German states.

    Voting in West Germany got off to a slow start on Sunday, because of the wintry conditions. But the momentum of polling picked up and by noon nearly 40 per cent of the country's 40,800,000 eligible voters had cast their ballots. Chancellor Brandt and his wife voted early at a local school in the fashionable Bonn suburb of Venusberg.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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