World
November 22, 2024 09:00
berlin, germany - German Defense Minister Pistorius has offered the party leadership to Scholz, resolving the internal struggle within SPD. Read more on telegraaf.nl
While the cat's away, the mice will play: this must have been how Olaf Scholz felt on his long flight from Berlin to the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this week. Both the influential conservative circle Seeheimer Kreis and the Jusos - the party's youth movement - revolted during the flight. To make matters worse, the support from the Social Democrats in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was dwindling.
Germany is set to have early parliamentary elections on February 23, 2025. The densely populated North Rhine-Westphalia is the birthplace of the old working-class party SPD, where generations of 'coal miners' toiled in the mines. Powerful local SPD leaders state, 'We hear a lot of support for Boris Pistorius.' Based on the polls - in which the SPD can only count on sixteen percent of the votes - it seems almost certain that at least a hundred SPD colleagues will not be re-elected to the next parliament. Scholz, who emerged victorious as the chancellor candidate in 2021, has also lost his popularity among the Eastern Germans. Only one in six wants him to remain in the Berlin Chancellery.
Opponent Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic CDU, the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, is twice as popular among the electorate. But even he does not measure up to the crowd-puller Boris Pistorius, the defense minister of the SPD, who could count on the support of about two-thirds of Germans. This former mayor of Osnabrück instills confidence with his nasal voice and is beloved by the quarter million employees of the German Armed Forces.
But with his poker face, he hesitated for months to declare whether he wants to lead the strongest and largest country in the eurozone. Until Thursday, when he offered Scholz the party leadership. In a video to the SPD members, Pistorius said that this was his 'own, sovereign, personal decision.'
He stated that Scholz is an 'excellent chancellor' who led with three parties through 'perhaps the biggest crisis of three decades.' Scholz said, 'And I announced in parliament to ask for trust. I want to win the elections with the SPD.'
Now, the voters find out shortly before the mid-February elections on whom they can vote. The giants from the 160-year-old SPD, Sigmar Gabriel and Franz Müntefering, spoke out for renewal as former party leaders. But they did not do so by unequivocally choosing Pistorius or opposing Scholz.
'There is no automatic entitlement to the party leadership,' stated Müntefering (85). Scholz has not been declared a candidate by the hundreds of thousands of members, the hundreds of deputies, or the party leadership. The only one who did so was himself, when he pulled the plug on the unpopular left-liberal government in early November.
But now, the first sympathizers refuse to put up campaign posters with Scholz all over the country. Especially in East Germany, which tends to vote for radical populists from the right or left, the obstinate, grumpy, and often know-it-all chancellor is unpopular.
The genie is now out of the bottle. 'The bomb has exploded,' commented the daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung. 'Flaring peat fire in the SPD,' wrote tabloid Bild. 'Savior wanted,' reads the ironic title in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The press and the general public seem to desire a new face within the ruling party.
However, times are not glorious for Germany. The economy is struggling, automakers like Ford and Volkswagen plan significant layoffs in their factory personnel. An emergency budget is on the way, and the re-election of the convicted Republican Donald Trump in the US threatens a global trade war and more expensive aid for Kiev. Scholz, for the first time in two years, was forced to call the Russian aggressor Vladimir Putin this week.
Each day the duel, the shadow boxing between Scholz and Pistorius, continued, the SPD became more damaged. Former party leader Norbert Walter-Borjans and the youth division demanded a quick decision. But it proved difficult, as the experienced chancellor did not want to stop, and his defense minister did not dare to come out of cover. The wait seemed to be for a regicide. 'I am a loyal party soldier,' Pistorius declared significantly. 'But never say never, the only thing certain is that I will never become pope.'
On Thursday evening, he told the 'best comrades' of the SPD 'that I am not available for the position of chancellor.’ Scholz ensured that Germany became a more reliable partner of NATO and Ukraine. Pistorius warned of the 'dangerous attacks of populists on democracy.'