With the German early general election just three months away, opposition within the party against Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party·SPD), who is seeking re-election, is growing stronger.
According to local media such as Spiegel and Die Zeit on the 16th (local time), SPD members belonging to the Zehheimer faction agreed at a meeting on the 12th that there is no chance of winning the general election if Chancellor Scholz is nominated as the next chancellor candidate. Among the attendees, comments such as "Scholz has completely lost the trust of the people," "There is no motivation to campaign for Scholz," and "A disaster will occur in the February general election" were also made.
The Zehheimer faction is a group of conservative-leaning members within the centrist-progressive SPD, and it is the largest of the three main factions. Although some regional party organizations have previously demanded a change of chancellor candidate, local media reported that this is the first time such voices have emerged at the central party level.
In a survey conducted by polling agency INSA on the 14th and 15th, 45% of respondents said that Defense Minister Boris Pistorius should run as the chancellor candidate instead. Among SPD supporters, this proportion reached 59%. While Minister Pistorius ranks first in a preference survey of 20 major politicians from both ruling and opposition parties, Chancellor Scholz is placed 19th. The SPD’s party support rate also remained third at 15.5%, behind the centrist-conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)·Christian Social Union (CSU) alliance (32.5%) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) (19.5%).
The SPD leadership has not changed its position of nominating Chancellor Scholz as the party’s chancellor candidate. This is because of the clear ideological and policy differences with Friedrich Merz, CDU leader and chancellor candidate of the CDU·CSU alliance. The German chancellor is elected by federal parliament members after the general election. Minister Pistorius has also declined the chancellorship, stating that he wants to remain as defense minister in the next government.
Lars Klingbeil, SPD co-leader, warned that "discussing the person rather than the policy is not important," and that the chancellor candidate debate has been unnecessarily heated. The SPD leadership plans to decide on the chancellor candidate at a meeting on the 30th of this month and finalize it by mid-January next year.
Following the Free Democratic Party (FDP)’s withdrawal from the coalition government, the Greens, who remain in the centrist-progressive coalition with the SPD, plan to nominate Robert Habeck, Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, as their chancellor candidate on the same day. The Greens recently recorded a support rate of 11.5% in opinion polls, ranking fourth.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
