BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partners kick off their battle for September elections at the weekend, under threat of being booted out of parliament after failed promises and internal bickering.
The Free Democratic Party (FDP) will hold a congress in the southern city of Nuremberg on Saturday and Sunday, two months after choosing a former economy minister as their election candidate in a bid to breathe new life into the party’s flagging popularity.
Merkel says she wants another term in government with the pro-business party but its fortunes are uncertain as its ratings among voters have plummeted since its historic showing in 2009 elections.
A series of disastrous regional election defeats have followed, with polls consistently showing the party hovering around the five percent threshold for winning seats in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
After clinching 14.6 percent in 2009 in its best ever score, the party faces being cast out into the political wilderness for the first time in its 55-year history after September 22 if it does not win back voter confidence.
That could force Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) into an alliance with the centre-left Social Democrats or the ecologist Greens, or even hand the centre-left opposition a majority.
Amid a tax evasion scandal involving Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness, a political ally of Merkel, her conservatives slipped three points to 39 percent in a weekly poll published on Wednesday, pushing them below 40 percent for the first time this year.
AFP
