BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, mired in crisis after his three-party coalition collapsed this week, said on Friday he is open to talks on whether to move forward snap elections.

The embattled chancellor has signalled new polls by March — half a year earlier than scheduled — but all opposition parties have urgently demanded they be held as early as January to restore stability.

Two-thirds of German voters agree, a survey showed, demanding a new government quickly at a time when Germany faces deep economic woes and geopolitical volatility.

Germany’s crisis erupted on Wednesday, just as Donald Trump won the White House race with as yet unknown consequences for transatlantic trade and the crises in Ukraine and Middle East.

Scholz’s political rivals have threatened to block his minority government from passing laws unless he immediately asks for a confidence vote that would allow for a speedy election.

But Scholz threw the ball back into their court by demanding they first help him pass key legislation, in a message aimed chiefly at the CDU-CSU conservative opposition.

Speaking in his trademark unruffled tone on the sidelines of an EU summit in Budapest, Scholz urged a “calm debate” first among parliamentary groups on what laws can be passed this year.

This “could help answer the question of when the right time is” for a confidence vote leading to an early election, he said.

He added that “the election date is not a purely political” decision but must also “allow sufficient time for the organisation of a fair and democratic election”.

‘Clear the way’

In Berlin, the debate was anything but calm.

The conservative opposition seems to have rejected Scholz’s offer of talks out of hand.

“First the vote of confidence, then we can talk about issues,” conservative MP Alexander Dobrindt told the Rheinische Post newspaper.

The popular Bild daily called for Scholz to “clear the way” for a new government. “You, Mr Scholz, have tried and failed,” Bild editor Marion Horn wrote in a blistering commentary.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024