Conservatives rally to oust Schroeder
At a party congress in the western city of Dortmund ahead of the September 18 election, Ms Merkel’s Christian Union alliance said it was ready to unseat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder after seven years in opposition.
“Twenty days left and then we’ll have new hope and new prospects,” Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber said ahead of a speech by Ms Merkel. “Schroeder retired, Merkel as chancellor and Germany on the road to a new beginning.”
The one-day congress drew 1,000 CDU delegates and 10,000 supporters from across the country to the Ruhr valley. A Queen cover band whipped up the crowd gathered in a sports arena with the victory anthem We Are The Champions.
Mr Schroeder had hoped to catch the conservatives flat-footed when he announced in May after a state election debacle that he would seek to bring the national election forward by one year. But the Christian Union parties have, apart from a few gaffes, largely presented a united front behind Ms Merkel, who now looks set to become Germany’s first female leader. The campaign has been dominated by Germany’s anaemic economic growth, sagging consumer confidence and the more than 11% unemployment rate. Analysts say Merkel is expected to win because Mr Schroeder has little chance of making headway on those issues before the poll.
Polls show the charismatic Mr Schroeder consistently beats the technocratic Ms Merkel by a clear margin in terms of personal popularity. But in Germany, where voters choose the party, the SPD is struggling to clear the 30% hurdle in most voter surveys, versus about 43% for Ms Merkel’s Christian Union alliance.
Ms Merkel’s economic and labour market reform scheme includes a mix of income tax cuts, plans to make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers and a hike of the value-added tax to lower non-wage labour costs.
Mr Schroeder criticised the strategy as socially unbalanced and economically unwise, in an interview with ZDF public television yesterday.
