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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
RSS