As fresh polls showed a tightening of Germany’s election race on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised voters they will be in safe hands if she stays leader of Europe’s economic giant.
“Germany has had four good years,” she wrote in a letter mailed to more than five million households ahead of today’s vote, in which she seeks a third term for her Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
“We have achieved a lot together. I also want the next four years to be good,” wrote Merkel, who is dubbed “Mummy” in her country and often called the world’s most powerful woman.
Photo: Reuters
“If you want me to keep working as your chancellor, then please give your votes to the CDU on Sunday,” said the letter, signed “Your Angela Merkel.”
Two new polls placed her coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) neck-and-neck at 45 percent to 45 percent with the combined leftist opposition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the far-left Linke.
However, the Linke, which scored 9 percent in both polls, has been rejected as a coalition partner by all major parties.
“We should expect a government in which the conservatives are the strongest political force and Mrs Merkel very likely the chancellor,” Berlin Free University political scientist Gero Neugebauer said.
The big question is with whom Merkel would end up governing.
A wild card are small parties that have hovered close to the 5 percent mark needed for entry into parliament — especially the new euro-skeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD), which scored 4 percent in Friday’s Forsa institute poll and 4.5 percent in an Allensbach survey.
Merkel’s biggest liability are her junior partners the FDP, who were kicked out of Bavaria’s state parliament on Sunday last week, but would, according to the two polls, narrowly scrape by nationally with 5 percent or 5.5 percent.
The FDP, in a desperate bid to hold onto power, has urged conservatives to “split” their ballot by casting district votes for the CDU, but giving the Free Democrats their second, or party, vote to save the coalition.
Merkel in her letter implored her supporters to do no such thing and avoid what one newspaper dubbed a “blood transfusion” for the struggling FDP.
Should the smaller party crash out, Merkel would have to seek new partners — most likely her party’s traditional rivals the SPD, with whom she ruled in a previous 2005 to 2009 “grand coalition.”
For now the two big parties remain in battle mode, seeking to energize their base and win over millions of undecided voters.
Merkel headed to Munich later on Friday on the eve of the world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival, days after the CDU’s regional sister party scored a huge victory in Bavaria state.
Her challenger, the SPD’s Peer Steinbrueck, at a Berlin rally on Thursday made a spirited call for more social justice and solidarity in Europe, as well as a more muscular leadership than what he labeled Merkel’s “going around in circles.”
The self-styled “straight talk” candidate has suffered through a series of gaffes and blunders, not helped by a magazine cover photograph that showed him giving the middle finger as a non-verbal reply to a question on his limping candidacy.
The image heightened the contrast between brash Steinbrueck and what has been called the sphinxlike persona of Merkel, who often sits out problems and avoids polarizing language.
The chancellor’s campaign trail symbol — used in a giant placard at Berlin railway station — is the diamond gesture she makes with her index fingers and thumbs in many photos.
One supermarket chain on Friday took out a full-page newspaper advertisement showing a mock ballot paper with pictures of two hand gestures — one making the diamond, the other flipping the bird.
“If in doubt, choose the diamond,” it said.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS