Merkel to win second term

Faces a tough battle:

GERMANY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks set to win a second term in Sunday’s election, but faces a tough battle to secure the centre-right government she says is needed to nurture Europe’s largest economy back to health.

GERMANY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks set to win a second term in Sunday’s election, but faces a tough battle to secure the centre-right government she says is needed to nurture Europe’s largest economy back to health.

Merkel, 55, remains popular four years after taking power atop an awkward “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats (SPD), and polls give her conservatives a healthy 8-11 point lead over to their traditional rivals before the vote.

But after a campaign widely criticised for lacking passion and substance, Merkel’s party has seen its support dip in the final weeks and she is no longer assured of her coalition of choice with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

Should she fail in her bid to team up with the FDP, she will probably be forced into the same uneasy right-left partnership that she has presided over since 2005.

That would doom her plans to reduce taxes, pare back the role of the state in the economy and extend the lifespan of German nuclear power plants that are scheduled to be shut down over the next decade.

At a final rally in Berlin on the eve of the vote, Merkel told some 3,000 supporters that Germany needed the stability that would come with a centre-right government, and said the SPD would push up taxes and endanger a nascent recovery.

Her SPD challenger, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking in Dresden, urged voters to block Merkel’s preferred coalition, saying it would polarise German society by helping the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

“It’s going to be another close race,” said Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling group, whose survey on Friday showed Merkel just shy of a centre-right majority. It had one in five voters still undecided.

Berlin, Sunday, Reuters