Certainly, nothing prepared him for the events of spring 1996.
Shortly before 1am on 19 April, he noticed a bright light through the window of his house adjoining the temple. BRITAIN’S MOST important Asian defence agreement has been thrown into jeopardy by the Asian economic crisis and a smouldering dispute between Singapore and Malaysia. The battle of personalities is being decided now.The Social Democrats are holding a steady lead of 4 to 5 points over the Christian Democrats, and their campaign is only now moving into top gear. The pollsters and many of his own supporters are beginning to give up on Mr Kohl.With Bavaria out of the way, Mr Schroder’s special train rolled into Baden-Wurttemberg, to bring the same message to the people of the Danube town of Ulm: “Spread the word – I want to win and I will win.”. In presentation, the sleek SPD organisation, the Hollywoodesque rallies and the strategic coherence, are light years ahead of Chancellor Kohl’s lumbering election machine.

The Social Democrats’ spin doctors have decided to keep foreign relations, Europe and crime out of the presentation, because they are deemed to be of little interest to undecided voters.With real issues getting little airing from either side, the elections of 27 September will be about presentation and personality. As the crisis in Russia heightened, references began to appear about Boris Yeltsin’s chumminess – “meetings in the sauna” – with Mr Kohl.Otherwise, the same buttons are pressed every time: unemployment, the government’s pension cuts, the state of the health service and sick pay, and a pledge to improve youth training.The applause comes raining in. The 45-minute off-the-cuff presentation is preceded by the same music and accompanied by the same videos.The message stays the same, apart from minor improvisations. “Kohl must go.”It was an impressive display of enthusiasm so deep in the heart of enemy territory. Augsburg was the mid-point on Mr Schroder’s two-day tour of the conservative south. If the aspiring chancellor can charm Augsburgers, he should not have much trouble with the rest of the country.To reach them, Mr Schroder changed virtually none of the script he has been delivering up and down the country The method and its effect is becoming apparent.

The town is prosperous, with relatively low unemployment and many Catholic churches. It is steeped in the arch-conservatism of Helmut Kohl’s Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union. “And I sipped only a little.” Nevertheless, in this election campaign, in which appearances seem to count a great deal more than content, he had done his duty, and was amply rewarded for his effort.
“Gerhard, Gerhard,” thundered the chorus, clapping to the rhythm thumped out by Social Democrat cheerleaders at the front. Despite government insistence that Rwanda and Uganda have invaded, Gaetan Kakudji, minister of the interior, acknowledged that most of the dead or captured rebel fighters in Kinshasa are non-Tutsi Congolese in Congolese uniforms.To help identify allies, all government troops have been ordered to wear their uniforms inside out.. With 3,000 well-oiled throats cheering him on in the beer-tent at Augsburg, the candidate did his best to conform

“It was only half full,” he confided afterwards.

Not even Gerhard Schroder, who only last Sunday had forsworn alcohol until the day he becomes Chancellor of Germany, could risk affronting local pride. THEY DO not expect visiting politicians to kiss babies in Bavaria, but no interloper can escape the rigours of hoisting a three-litre tankard and drinking the contents manfully. Yesterday the government dispatched 50 instructors to train the people how to kill in Bakongo, the rebel-held province south-west of Kinshasa.The question in the long term is not who will rule but how they can possibly rule over a massive nation riddled with ethnic and regional distrust.Complicating matters is the degree of support rebels have received in certain areas of Kinshasa. The government plans to urge the population to flee, then flatten the area with artillery and bombs.For the rebels to break out, they need reinforcements and heavy weapons. At least one helicopter, likely a government or allied craft, was shot down over the disputed area yesterday.Despite the failures of Mr Kabila’s rule widely discussed a few months ago, much of the population is solidly behind him, thanks largely to inflamatory rhetoric.State radio has urged citizens to take up nails, machetes, spears, bows and arrows and other weapons to kill Tutsis.

A Congolese journalist counted 40 charred bodies.President Laurent Kabila has unleashed a relentless effort to fight rapid rebel advances and counteract massive army defections. He is vilifying ethnic Tutsis [believed by Mr Kabila to be the driving force behind the war], foreign journalists, French citizens, Americans and anyone born in eastern Congo.The battle for Kinshasa seems at stalemate. Government troops backed by Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian soldiers, aircraft and armour appear firmly in control of the city’s strategic Ndjili airport and nearly the entire city.But government sources said rebel troops hold significant swaths of densely populated residential land, marsh and forest seven kilometres from the airport. Government troops manned roadblocks every few hundred metres.Journalists saw one suspected rebel beaten by two soldiers, thrown off a bridge screaming, then machine-gunned as he tried to struggle from the river. PUBLIC EXECUTIONS and ethnic reprisals swept Kinshasa yesterday amid an atmosphere of anger and xenophobia. At dusk artillery blasts rumbled across the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and heavy machine-gun fire erupted from dozens of locations in the city.
Fifteen months ago rebel soldiers quietly infiltrated Kinshasa’s sprawling suburbs, provoking not a sound from a population eager to see the last of Mobutu Sese Seko.This week many of the same fighters crept back to attack Kinshasa but angry mobs doused suspected rebels in petrol and burnt them alive.The charred bodies of rebel soldiers, sometimes in pieces, littered the eastern suburbs yesterday. We have to be able to forgive those we believe have wronged us.” Not doing so, he said, makes people “harden their heart and leads to self-inflicted wounds”.The Southern revivalist atmosphere of the meeting, marking an occasion that was immortalised by Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech, suited the President, who is known – thanks to his Southern upbringing – to feel more at home with American blacks than do many white Americans.The quasi-religious event, which included gospel singing, was also appropriate to the personal subtext of contrition in Mr Clinton’s address.His appearance at the meeting, announced less than 24 hours in advance, appeared to reflect a compromise between the views of his political advisers, who have been open in wanting Mr Clinton to apologise more profusely for his affair, and his lawyer and his wife, who were reported to favour silence.Among the leading members of the black intelligentsia who attended the meeting was Anita Hill, the university professor who gained national renown for contesting the appointment to the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, whom she alleged to have sexually harassed her.Ms Hill’s presence signalled the constancy of American blacks, and American women for Mr Clinton, despite his admission of an affair with a junior employee..