There are federal elections on the 18th in Germany. One of the parties contesting (and having a good chance of actually entering parliament) is the newly founded ‘Die Linke.PDS‘. This party is a merger of the PDS (which is the sucessor party to the former east German ruling party SED and the WASG which is a left wing split-off from the SPD. being a merger they have to leaders (Oskar Lafontaine & Gregor Gisi) and arguably the worst election poster so far:

That’s Lafontaine on the left and Gisi on the right. Its hard for me to imagine what went through the minds of the people who have come up with this arrangement. To me it looks like the guy on the left has died and the guy on the right is praising now dead leader for his wisdom and life time achievements. Now Oskar Lafontaine has not really died yet (although he has narrowly escaped an attempt on his life a couple of years ago) and Gisi has no real reason to kowtow to lafontaine like this (his PDS commands the bigger part of the potential electorate of the merged ‘Die Linke.PDS’) but maybe they have been inspired by the recent elections in Lebanon where having a dead godfather on your side (and lots of posters with him in the background hanging around town) has proven to be a decisive asset for the anti-syrian opposition. Speaking of Lebanon, they make much nicer posters with multiple politicians on them over there.

Update (10.09.05): Seems they have figured it out themselves and reverted to posters with single politicians on them: individual portraits of Oskar Lafontaine in West Germany and Gregor Gisy east Germany.