Markus Söder, prime minister of Bavaria, has declared his intention to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, in a move that sets the stage for a showdown with Armin Laschet, the CDU leader who has also laid claim to Germany’s top job.
Söder’s move takes German politics into uncharted territory. Normally the leader of the Christian Democratic Union has a near-automatic claim to run as the chancellor candidate for the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the much smaller CSU.
But Laschet’s poor approval rating and the CDU’s recent slide in the polls just five-and-a-half months ahead of elections to the Bundestag have encouraged Söder, who is leader of the CSU as well as Bavarian prime minister, to lay claim to the candidacy himself.
Söder said he and Laschet had had a “friendly and open”, but “inconclusive”, conversation over the weekend about who should run as the CDU/CSU’s joint candidate. “We came to the conclusion that both of us are suitable and both are ready,” he told reporters.
“There are no doubts about both of our determination to be candidate,” he said. “Both of us think we have good reasons.”
He added that if the CDU supported him, then he was prepared to run, but if it decided differently he would accept the outcome and the two parties would continue to work together.
Söder’s chances of ascending to the chancellery are better than for any CSU leader in a generation. The CDU’s sharp decline in the polls has triggered panic among many CDU MPs and prompted some of them to look to Söder as the party’s potential saviour.
Yet no member of the CDU’s governing executive has endorsed him. Most remain loyal to Laschet, who is prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, as well as being CDU leader. The CDU executive will meet on Monday and many observers expect it to close ranks behind their leader.
In an interview with German TV channel ARD, Söder said it had not been his “life plan” to run for chancellor. “The response I’ve been getting, and the expectation of a lot of people in Germany, and the polls, are playing an important — if not the absolutely decisive — role,” he said.
“There have been a lot of people calling from the CDU too, saying declare yourself, say if you’re generally prepared [to run],” he added.
The Christian Democrats had long soared in the polls, credited with Germany’s deft stewardship of the first wave of the pandemic. But in recent months they have experienced a sharp decline, with voters blaming them for recent missteps in coronavirus policy and, in particular, the slow pace of Covid-19 vaccinations. They have also suffered from revelations that a number of CDU and CSU MPs received large commissions on deals to procure face masks at the height of the first wave last year.
A hard-charging populist with a reputation as a political shape-shifter, Söder has enjoyed strong approval ratings throughout the pandemic, which revealed him as a decisive crisis manager.
He threw his hat in the ring at a meeting of the leadership of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on Sunday, which was also attended by Merkel and Laschet.
Laschet declared his intention to run at the same meeting. Speaking at a joint press conference afterwards, Laschet said he and Söder would decide among themselves who should be the candidate.
“We will answer this question well, in the spirit of the high personal regard we have for each other,” he said.
The two men had initially said they would reach a mutual decision between them before the end of May. But in recent days, more senior figures in both Berlin and Bavaria have urged them to speed up.
“When I consider the mood in the CDU as a whole, the decision should be taken very swiftly,” Laschet told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
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2021-04-11 16:26:51Z
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