Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his conservative challenger, Angela Merkel, launch into the final day of the German election campaign on Saturday championing rival visions for the future of Europe’s biggest economy.
Polls show Merkel is well on her way to becoming Germany’s first woman chancellor in Sunday’s general election, but a resurgent Schröder may keep her from forming a government with her preferred partner, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
With between 20% and 30% of the electorate still undecided, Merkel and Schröder were zig-zagging the country in the final hours to defend their plans to jump-start the economy and get the 4,7-million unemployed back to work.
The race is so close that both main parties have broken with tradition and will campaign right up to when polling stations close on Sunday evening, although Schröder and Merkel are not expected to take part personally.
Merkel told supporters of her Christian Union alliance (CDU/CSU) at a rally late on Friday that Germans have “lost confidence” in Schröder and his Social Democratic Party (SPD).
“He announced he would create two million jobs, but what do we have now? One-and-a-half-million fewer people in work,” Merkel told an energised crowd gathered in a giant circus tent in Berlin, using figures contested by the SPD.
The former physicist from the communist East Germany said her party and the FDP deserve the chance to jump-start the spluttering economy.
“Red-green is history, CDU/CSU and the FDP are the future,” she said, using the nickname for the current coalition of the SPD and Greens.
Schröder told thousands of party faithful in an almost simultaneous speech in Berlin that the Christian Democrats will destroy the country’s “social solidarity”.
His voice cracking after more than 100 campaign rallies, Schröder said Merkel is “willing but not able” to lead the country and that only he can solve its deep-seated economic problems without putting the chief burden on the poor.
“We had to explain to voters that we can only maintain our social welfare system if we reform it,” Schröder said in defence of his controversial economic-reform package known as Agenda 2010. “That was a necessary process that I believe in and know to be right.”
Schröder acknowledged that cuts to benefits he introduced have cost him political support, particularly within his own party.
But he said the reforms are finally beginning to bear fruit and bring down the crippling unemployment rate of more than 11%.
His SPD party has narrowed the gap with Merkel’s CDU, turning an election that seemed cut and dried two weeks ago into a fight for every last vote.
A poll by the Allensbach Institute published in Saturday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed the Christian Democrats with 41,5 and the Free Democrats with 8% — barely enough to form a government.
The Social Democrats scored 32,5% and their junior coalition partner, the Greens, tallied 7%. A rival alliance, the Left Party, comprised of SPD dissidents and former communists, had 8,5% support.
Yet polls also show that one in four voters remains undecided, meaning it is still unclear whether Merkel will be able to form her favoured alliance or be forced into a “grand coalition” with her rivals in the SPD.
Despite Schröder’s comeback in the polls, he looks likely to lose his risky bid to win a fresh mandate for reform by forcing through elections 12 months early — a gamble decisively won by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Japan’s general election last weekend.
Schröder, a charismatic campaigner who took over as chancellor from Helmut Kohl in 1998, has said he will not serve as the leader of the junior party in the event of a grand coalition and is likely to quit politics. — AFP