On the eve of crucial snap elections, where conservatives are the front-runners and the far right is expected to win, German politicians made their final appeals to voters on Saturday.
In the face of a tense US administration, election frontrunner Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday promised to revive Europe’s largest economy and defend its interests.
Merz said, “With me, Germany will have a strong voice in the European Union again”.
He remarked to a cheery crowd in Munich, “Europe must be a player and not maybe to get a seat at a side table.”
“No, we must sit at the main table, and we must safeguard our interests against Russia, against China, and if necessary also with respect to America”.
“Europe must be a player and not ask maybe to get a seat at a side table”, he said, adding, “No, we must sit at the main table”.
However, he said, “We will only gain respect in this European Union again if we finally overcome our country’s economic weakness”. Which he added was “overwhelmingly homemade”.
The CDU party currently holds 30% of the vote in favor.
The US president’s call to action on the Ukraine war comes at a pivotal moment for both Europe as a whole and its largest economy, in particular as a result of Donald Trump’s reaching out to Russia to end a divided Western position.
Germany’s economy has been struggling for the past two years, and it is facing bitter social unrest over immigration and security, so Trump’s threats of a trade war are in for more trouble.
Sunday’s vote is being held more than half a year ahead of schedule after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition between his Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP collapsed in early November.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been polling in second place at about 20%, is expected to win in the election, which is expected to turn in a historic way. This is fueled by anger over a string of deadly knife attacks and car rammings that have been attributed to immigrants.
A 30-year-old Spanish man was wounded in a stabbing incident at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial on Friday. Just 10 days before the election, an Afghan man was arrested for driving a car through a street rally in Munich, killing two people.
Elon Musk, a tech billionaire, and JD Vance, a vice president, have spoken out in support of the AfD, which has received a lot of support from Trump’s inner circle.
Halting the rise of the AfD was a “central task” of the election, Scholz told constituents in Potsdam.
At the campaign event, Scholz reaffirmed that “the answer to this must be to ensure that our country is still as advanced in 10, 20, and 30 years as we are today.”
The incumbent in the chancellor’s office stressed his support for Ukraine and called for more spending to boost Germany’s defences.
“We have not left Ukraine alone, that should not and must not happen in the future”, said Scholz, whose three years in office have largely been defined by Russia’s invasion.
Source: Aljazeera
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