GERMANY: Germany's conservatives fired the opening shot in what will be a tight election campaign yesterday, naming unemployment and the economic downturn as key election issues in the run-up to next September's poll, writes Derek Scally, in Berlin
Mr Edmund Stoiber, the 60-year-old Prime Minister of Bavaria and chancellor hopeful, huddled down with advisers over the weekend to prepare an election programme he hopes will return the conservatives to power.
"The Schröder government has lead Germany into recession: that will be the central debate of this election," said Mr Stoiber yesterday.
With zero growth and nearly four million Germans without work, Mr Stoiber said he would not tire of reminding Mr Schröder of his broken election promise, to reducing unemployment to 3.5 million this year.
The Chancellor shrugged off blame for Germany's economic slump yesterday.
"Germans know that the economic slowdown was caused by the very people now looking for power," he told Der Spiegel magazine yesterday.
"A candidate like Mr Stoiber will polarise German society," he said, referring to the Bavarian's arch-conservative social policies that play well at home, but have won him few admirers in more liberal northern Germany.
Mr Stoiber appears to have softened his anti-immigration and euro-sceptic rhetoric, for the duration of the election campaign at least.
But before converting voters, he has to unite his own Christian Social Union and its sister party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), whose leader, Ms Angela Merkel, ceded the chancellor candidacy to Mr Stoiber on Friday.
To unite the two parties, Mr Stoiber is assembling a shadow cabinet that includes Ms Merkel and CDU parliamentary leader Mr Friedrich Merz in prominent roles.
He needs the support of the CDU and Ms Merkel to win support in northern and eastern German states.
Mr Stoiber hopes to be able to sell his record of low unemployment and record investment to voters in the rest of Germany.
In a centre-right coalition with the Liberal Party, he plans to discontinue the unpopular ecological tax and stop the proposed winding down of nuclear power stations over the next 30 years.
According to weekend polls, he trails Mr Schröder by four points in personal popularity, but is more trusted than on the issues of the economy and internal security.