BERLIN, Sept 17: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his conservative challenger Angela Merkel championed rival visions for the future of Europe’s biggest economy on Saturday on the final day of the German election campaign.

Polls show Ms Merkel, 51, is well on her way to becoming Germany’s first woman chancellor in the poll, but a resurgent Schroeder may keep her from forming a government with her chosen partner, the pro-business Free Democrats.

With between 20 and 30 per cent of the 62-million-strong electorate still undecided, Ms Merkel and Mr Schroeder were zigzagging the country to defend their plans to jumpstart the economy and slash unemployment.

The race, the shortest in German post-war history, is so close that both main parties have broken with tradition and will campaign right up to the end of polling on Sunday.

Mr Schroeder and Ms Merkel appeared at separate rallies Saturday in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was the loss of that state’s election in May that prompted the chancellor to seek to bring the national poll forward by one year.

Merkel told an energized crowd in the former capital Bonn that the seven-year tenure of Schroeder’s centre-left government had been a “failure”, with 4.7 million Germans jobless, and that he was keeping future budget cuts under wraps to salvage his re-election bid.

“We will not make false promises about how to get Germany moving again,” the former physicist from communist East Germany told some 5,000 supporters, many waving orange “Angie” posters.

“I ask you to assure that I can become federal chancellor.”

Schroeder, 61, told some 10,000 supporters in the Ruhr Valley town of Recklinghausen that Merkel was incapable of assuring an economy balanced by prosperity and fairness.

“Who believes that those who slept through yesterday can organize tomorrow’s future?” Schroeder said, referring to the conservatives’ 16 years in power under chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Both candidates wound up a race that has been dominated by the economy in the business capital Frankfurt, with Merkel visiting an international motor show.—AFP