Rocked by ferocious attacks on her shadow finance minister just days before an election, German conservative leader Angela Merkel looked poised yesterday to rehabilitate a popular party heavyweight and former rival.
Merkel, who once appeared coasting towards a center-right coalition victory, has stumbled in the past 10 days as Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has turned his fire on the radical tax plans of her finance expert Paul Kirchhof.
Merkel, in an interview published yesterday, appeared to endorse a suggestion from Kirchhof that the ideal finance team in a future government would be a "tandem" arrangement with prominent conservative politician Friedrich Merz.
It was unclear exactly what role might be played by Merz, who quit as party finance spokesman and deputy leader last year after a series of heated clashes with Merkel.
Talk of a Merz comeback, four days before Sunday's election, reflected conservative nerves in the face of a late surge by Schroeder, who is bidding to repeat his dramatic comeback victory at the 2002 election.
Polls this week show Merkel still well ahead of Schroeder but short of the majority she seeks to form a coalition with her preferred partners, the liberal Free Democrats.
That could force her to team up instead with Schroeder's Social Democrats, an outcome which many Germans seem to favor.
Financial markets doubt whether such a "grand coalition" could force through radical reforms to bring down the 11.6 percent jobless rate, spur growth and cut debt.
Merkel's choice of Kirchhof, a leading academic and lawyer but a political novice, has presented Schroeder with an irresistible target for attack.
Schroeder has portrayed him as a man living on another planet, and said he would reallocate wealth from the poor to the rich by taxing bus drivers at the same rate as millionaires.
"A uniform tax rate of 25 percent means a gigantic redistribution from the bottom to the top," Schroeder told Hanover's Neue Presse newspaper.
In a series of increasingly heated exchanges, Merkel has accused the chancellor of deliberately lying about conservative policy, which would cut income and payroll taxes while raising sales tax to 18 from 16 percent.
Schroeder insisted yesterday that he will not form an alliance with the new Left Party after this weekend's German election and dismissed as "absurd" speculation over other possible coalitions.
Buoyed by polls this month that have shown his party clawing back support, Schroeder said his aim was "for the Social Democrats to be the strongest party."
Merkel still appears likely to emerge as chancellor. But recent polls have raised the possibility that an alliance of Schroeder's current coalition -- the Social Democrats and Greens -- with the Left Party, a combination of ex-communists and former Social Democrats alienated by the chancellor's welfare state reforms, could garner enough support to rule together.
Still, all three parties have dismissed the idea of forming a three-way coalition, which would face major policy and personality clashes.
"Such a coalition is completely out of the question," Schroeder said, adding that "there will no form of collaboration" with the new party.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot