BERLIN: Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck travelled to eastern Germany yesterday to try to calm a storm over his recent comments suggesting opponent Angela Merkel lacked passion for Europe because she grew up in the former communist East.
The Social Democrat (SPD) trails Merkel’s conservatives by some 15 points in opinion polls with just six weeks left until a German election, and has been searching desperately for issues that might help him narrow the gap.
But his campaign has been dogged by gaffes, including the latest remarks, which infuriated some east Germans and drew rebukes from parties across the political spectrum.
At an SPD campaign event in the eastern city of Halle, Steinbrueck told his audience that the comments, made in a newspaper interview earlier this week, had been misconstrued and he praised easterners as “capable and hard-working people”.
“I certainly did not mean to suggest that people who grew up in the East have an innate or regionally-determined distance to Europe,” he said.
“And I ask you to please not understand the remarks this way.” Roughly a fifth of German voters live in the former communist East. The SPD has not done well there in past elections. In 2009, they won roughly 18 percent of the eastern vote, compared to nearly 30 percent each for Merkel’s conservatives and the far-left “Linke” party.
Reuters
