Merkel stands good chance of sitting at the chancellor’s desk in Berlin
By Craig Whitlock
OSNABRUECK (Germany): The woman who wants to rule Germany stepped to a microphone on the packed main square of this industrial city and reminded the crowd of the nation’s woes. The jobless rate is the highest since the end of the Second World War, she noted bleakly, economic growth is the weakest in Europe, the national mood gripped by doubt.
So what would Angela Merkel do about it? “Now, I don’t expect to hear loud applause,” she warned at the recent campaign event, before describing how she would raise the national sales tax — already 16 per cent for most items — to pay for her party’s job-creation programme.
Moans and grumbles rose from the audience of about 8,000 people. But Merkel didn’t back down. “You can decide,” she said. “We can continue as we have been, with promises of blue skies. But promises already have been made and promises have been broken. That needs to change.”
Unsmiling, unstylish and uncharismatic, Merkel, 51, is bidding to become Germany’s first female chancellor, as well as the first to have grown up behind the Iron Curtain, in the former East Germany. Polls show that her party, the Christian Democrats, holds a lead, albeit a narrowing one, in a national election scheduled for Sunday.
The vote comes at a pivotal moment for Germany, the biggest country in Europe and the world’s third-largest economy. Despite spending more than $1.5 trillion over the past 15 years to reunify the nation, Germany has failed to heal many divisions between east and west. It is also grappling with the competitive challenges of globalization, as German companies move jobs to lower-wage countries.
Although Merkel’s party leads in the polls, for many Germans she remains a remote figure. The former physicist rarely talks about her personal life, her upbringing under communism or how she became involved in politics. She often appears dour and uncomfortable. On her latest campaign poster, she looks like she’s clenching her teeth as she forces a grin.
“Typical German,” said Kai Sausmikat, 41, a voter who came to hear Merkel at the Osnabrueck rally, pulling down the corners of his mouth into a clown-like frown.
Merkel’s rivals, inside and outside her party, show little regard for her political skills. In July, when the Parliament voted to hold early elections, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told Merkel to her face that her campaign would collapse.
“Mrs Merkel, at this moment with your opinion polls, you appear like a magnificent-looking souffle in the oven,” Fischer said. “We’ll see what’s really left after the voters prick into it. I can’t wait.”
If the election were a personality contest, surveys suggest Merkel would lose by a wide margin to the telegenic incumbent, Gerhard Schroeder. But in Germany’s political system, national leaders are chosen by party, and the Christian Democrats lead the polls.
Merkel has run a simple campaign that makes no attempt to capitalize on her gender. She has focused on a plan to generate jobs by cutting payroll taxes and making it easier for companies to hire or fire workers. She has also called for an overhaul of Germany’s notoriously complicated tax code.
A victory for her party would likely mean closer relations with Washington. Merkel has strongly criticized Schroeder for alienating the United States, Germany’s closest post-war ally, in disputes over Iraq, although she does not support sending troops to that country.
As a politician on the stump, Merkel has shied away from discussing life under communism, even when addressing East German audiences.
Earlier this week, she visited her hometown of Templin for the first time during the campaign. About 600 people, including her mother, heard her speak outside a beer garden. Rather than wax nostalgic, Merkel merely acknowledged that the region ‘is what you call home’ and recited her standard speech.
